Surprise! Libs crash playoff bash
The Liberty came into its final game of the season with nothing to lose. Betnijah Laney said so herself almost 10 hours before beating the Washington Mystics on Friday. What’s oftentimes left out of that phrase, however, is when you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain.
So when the Mystics and Los Angeles Sparks closed out their seasons on Sunday with losses, there was the Liberty, gaining its first playoff berth since 2017 as the No. 8 seed. The team will head to Phoenix for a first-round match against Mercury, scheduled for 10 p.m. Thursday.
Liberty players were glued to their screens all Sunday afternoon, watching and waiting as the Mystics and Sparks played their final games of the season. And they celebrated best they could after the final buzzer on the Sparks-Wings game.
“MOOD CAUSE WE IN THE PLAYOFFS BABY,” Sabrina Ionescu wrote on her Instagram story with a photo of herself during a game. Jazmine Jones tweeted a photo of herself wearing a photoshopped Wings’ Marina Mabrey-Arike Ogunbowale T-shirt. And Michaela Onyenwere wrote, “STAYING ALIVE!” on her Twitter page.
The Liberty played its final game of the season like an intro to the playoffs. That was good practice. Now it’s time to gear up for the real deal. The Liberty went 1-2 against the Mercury this season. But even that one win—against a Diana Taurasi-less Phoenix squad—came down to the wire and a single possession.
It will take the same unity and accountability the Liberty exhibited on Friday in order to get by the Mercury’s Big 3 of Taurasi, Brittney Griner and Skyler Diggins-Smith.
The Libs being able to continue their season and not have to think of it in a past tense is equal parts good fortune and improved play. And it almost didn’t happen.
The Liberty played itself into and nearly out of playoff contention by losing eight straight games before the season finale. The team started the second half of the season No. 6 in the league, but couldn’t establish a consistent rhythm together. After learning a completely new defensive rotation, according to coach Walt Hopkins, they pulled off that 91-80 beatdown of the Mystics. A year ago, this team couldn’t manage more than two wins. The Libs were happy to have beaten that record when they did and decided before the season that improvement this year would be simply a better record. And none of them forgot that. “From 2-20 to the freaking playoffs,” Jones wrote on Twitter.
They finished this season 12-20, making the playoffs with some help from the Minnesota Lynx’s Aerial Powers, who scored 27 points with two rebounds and two assists over the Mystics and then the Wings’ Ogunbowale, who dropped 20 points, two rebounds, three assists and a steal on the Sparks Sunday.
Through the frustration and the tears and yelling from Hopkins through the season, they found a sweet spot, even if it came late.
The Liberty is 1-1 all-time postseason against the Mercury.