The Liberty didn’t look like they belonged in the same stratosphere as the Sky during their previous matchup, let alone the same basketball court.
Now the underdog Liberty must beat that same Chicago squad to keep its championship dreams alive, adopting the belief that a 38-point drubbing in Game 2 was an anomaly, or a glitch, as reinforced to players by the ugly tape.
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“We were pissed off after that game,” forward Natasha Howard said. “Also watching film, individually and collectively, we were mad at the way we played. We know we’re not that team.”
The opportunity for redemption is Tuesday, the Game 3 first-round series finale between the second-seeded Sky and seventh-seeded Liberty. It represents the first Liberty home playoff game in five years, and the first ever WNBA postseason contest at Barclays Center.
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For guard Rebecca Allen, the key is immobilizing what they did right to beat the Sky in Game 1, rather than dwelling on the embarrassment of Game 2.
Her squad’s 100-62 loss broke the league record for margin of defeat in the playoffs. But if the Liberty win Tuesday, that’s just a footnote in the story of this series.
“It wasn’t us,” Allen said. “And I think we showed the game prior what we can do, how we can execute. So whether you want to focus on that game or the first game, that’s your choice. But we know the team we can come out and be. That second game is not us. That’s not going to be us. So we have to make sure to step up.”
The simple solution is star Sabrina Ionescu playing better, or at least more aggressively.
She was passive and bottled up in Game 2 while managing just seven points on five shots, matching her turnovers with assists (three each). To be fair, the Liberty’s entire starting lineup was a disaster against Candace Parker’s crew in Chicago. The Liberty shot 10-for-31, including 1-for-11 on treys.
Three days earlier, however, Ionescu dropped 22 points on the Sky with six assists. The Liberty stole a victory in Chicago and another Tuesday will mean the franchise’s first playoff series victory since 2015, when James Dolan was the owner and his buddy Isiah Thomas served as the team president.
Allen, who was a rookie on that 2015 squad, said the Liberty can “exploit” Chicago’s hounding defense with better ball movement. It certainly failed on that front in Game 2, when the Liberty had more turnovers (19) than assists (15).
“Knowing that we can exploit the way they hard show, knowing we can find their weaknesses by the way they crowd,” Allen said. “It’s more about how we move the ball, how we choose to show up and I think that is what’s going to be most important.”
