There were plenty of moments in the second half when the Liberty were out of sorts, when they were far from the version of the superteam that made everything — at times — seem simple, but this one, late in the fourth quarter, was the dagger.
Betnijah Laney-Hamilton had missed her second free throw. Kayla Thornton had collected the rebound. But as she looked to reset the offense, Breanna Stewart had started setting a screen instead of preparing for Thornton’s pass — like the forward appeared to expect.
The Lynx collected possession, and Bridget Carleton hit a 3-pointer at the other end to stretch their lead to 11.
So what started as a promising Commissioner’s Cup — with the chance to repeat as champion and win their share of the $500,000 prize — turned disastrous for the Liberty, and it ended with a 94-89 loss at UBS Arena on Tuesday night.
Frustrations had already mounted entering the night when the game was moved out of Barclays Center with the first round of the NBA draft on Wednesday.
And it all ended with the Liberty falling short in a potential playoff series, or even WNBA Finals, preview.
Carleton led the Lynx with 23 points, while Napheesa Collier added 21 points and six rebounds.
Everything was working for the Liberty — and Sabrina Ionescu, specifically — by the time she intercepted Collier’s pass and sprinted down the court for an uncontested layup. Ionescu unleashed a roar heading back to the bench when the Lynx took a timeout.
The Liberty’s lead stretched to 10, its largest of the Commissioner’s Cup final.
But then it all flipped. It stayed that way, too.
A 33-13 run by the Lynx stretched across the final 3:43 of the first quarter, all of the third quarter and even the first two minutes of the fourth.
By that point, it was the Liberty that trailed by 10. Ionescu had one point in the second half. Jonquel Jones didn’t score altogether until taking free throws with 80 seconds remaining.
“I think we were our worst enemy and just trying to kinda reinvent the wheel and not go to what was working,” Ionescu said of the third quarter. “Obviously, we were trying to get JJ going, and I think we kinda shot ourselves in the foot with that in terms of kind of going away from what really worked.”
Stewart led the Liberty with 24 points and single-handedly pulled them back into the game in the fourth quarter with a personal 9-0 run.
Ionescu finished with 23 and 10 rebounds.
But the Lynx’s stout second-half defense complemented a balanced offense to win their first Commissioner’s Cup and establish themselves as a serious contender for the WNBA title in October.
The game, though, was also accompanied by an underlying storyline that it needed to get moved from Barclays Center. The frustration was palpable ahead of their morning shootaround Tuesday, when Stewart brought it up unprompted.
Jones used the words “frustrated” and “annoyed” to express the Liberty’s displeasure for not truly hosting the title game despite their 5-0 record — with all of those games across an eight-day stretch — to emerge as the Eastern Conference’s representative.
“JJ’s been playing great,” Brondello said. “They really took her out of the game.”
But once the game arrived, the Liberty’s offense still clicked like it has at so many other points the past two seasons, and at the center of that was Ionescu.
She led them with 18 points at halftime. She hit a 3-pointer from the Commissioner’s Cup logo, connected on a deep floater and stole a pass that allowed her to race down the court for an uncontested layup.
The evolution of Ionescu in the fourth healthy year of her WNBA career — the unlocked floater, the record-setting 3-point shot that still remains her most prolific strength — gave Stewart time to get going.
Eventually, though, the Lynx generated a response. They capitalized on a collection of missed turnovers from the Liberty — where the bulk of their 21 happened — and relied on clutch shots from Carleton and Collier to build a double-digit lead of their own.
“I think they executed better than us,” Stewart said, “and really, that’s it. … Twenty-one turnovers is never gonna win the game.”
So for the second consecutive time in the championship, the Liberty’s bid for a title ended in heartbreak.
The first happened in October, when they fell to the Aces in the four games and missed a chance to achieve the type of forever that has evaded the franchise since its creation.
“Everyone has a scar,” head coach Brondello said pregame, “it’s a memory, but scars heal, too.”
Less than a year later, though, the Lynx gave the Liberty another one.