The 2025 WNBA playoffs continued with a pair of first-round matchups on Wednesday night. <\/p>\n
The Phoenix Mercury forced Game 3 by securing a blowout win over the New York Liberty. The Golden State Valkyries are also set to face off against the Minnesota Lynx in Game 2 of their series. <\/p>\n
Phoenix Mercury 86, New York Liberty 60<\/p>\n
Minnesota Lynx at Golden State Valkyries, 10 p.m. ET<\/p>\n
Phoenix’s win over New York didn’t initially appear as if it would become lopsided, as the Liberty took a 9-4 lead to open the game before both teams were tied at the end of the first quarter. <\/p>\n
The Mercury finally gained some separation early in the second. While they only had a four-point advantage with just under six minutes left until halftime, Phoenix went on a 15-0 run to take a commanding double-digit lead. <\/p>\n
The Liberty struggled mightily against the Mercury defense in the second half, scoring just 23 points over the final two quarters of action. <\/p>\n
Phoenix won with a balanced scoring effort, as five different players finished with at least 10 points. Alyssa Thomas put together a strong all-around performance, recording 15 points, seven assists, six rebounds and one steal while shooting 6-of-13 from the field. <\/p>\n
For New York, stars Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu combined to score a mere 15 points on 5-of-19 shooting. <\/p>\n
The defending champions are now at risk of suffering a first-round exit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 WNBA playoffs continued with a pair of first-round matchups on Wednesday night. The Phoenix Mercury forced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-151863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}