{"id":156305,"date":"2025-09-20T04:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156305\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T04:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:08:10","slug":"thomas-has-a-triple-double-as-the-mercury-eliminate-the-defending-wnba-champion-liberty-79-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156305\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas has a triple-double as the Mercury eliminate the defending WNBA champion Liberty 79-73"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX (AP) \u2014 Alyssa Thomas had a 20 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in her fifth career playoff triple-double, and the Phoenix Mercury advanced to the second round of the WNBA playoffs by eliminating the defending champion New York Liberty 79-73 in Game 3 on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Satou Sabally added 23 points and 12 rebounds for the fourth-seeded Mercury, who play at top-seeded Minnesota on Sunday to start the best-of-five semifinal round.<\/p>\n

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Thomas has five of the seven WNBA playoff triple-doubles.<\/p>\n

Sami Whitcomb scored 13 points and Kahleah Copper had 12 points and nine rebounds for the Mercury, who had a 49-33 advantage on the boards. DeWanna Bonner had eight rebounds to pass Candace Parker for the most boards in playoff history with 614.<\/p>\n

Breanna Stewart, five days after spraining the MCL in her left knee in overtime of a Game 1 win, scored 30 points, including the last 14 in the fourth quarter for the Liberty. Sabrina Ionescu added 22 but the rest of the Liberty struggled.<\/p>\n

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There were five ties and 13 lead changes through three quarters, which ended with Phoenix on top 60-59, but New York never led in the fourth.<\/p>\n

Stewart’s three-point play had the Liberty within 65-64 with 6:51 to play. But Thomas had a basket, two assists and a rebound to get her ninth triple-double of this season, as the Mercury surged ahead 72-64 with 5:36 to play.<\/p>\n

Stewart made two free throws \u2014 she was 12 of 15 from the line \u2014 to make it 76-73 with 1:10 to play. The Liberty had a turnover and three misses in the last minute and finished 7 of 32 from 3-point range, including 1 for 17 in the second half.<\/p>\n

The Mercury led by 12 in the second quarter but with Ionescu scoring 12 points the Liberty cut it to 45-41 at halftime.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n

The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AP) \u2014 Alyssa Thomas had a 20 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in her fifth career…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[4652,4657,49,48,16298,12202,2598,3457,3461,4644,16295,4659,82,23761,25836,24594,630,26214],"class_list":["post-156305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-alyssa-thomas","tag-breanna-stewart","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dewanna-bonner","tag-kahleah-copper","tag-minnesota","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-phoenix-mercury","tag-sabrina-ionescu","tag-sami-whitcomb","tag-satou-sabally","tag-sports","tag-the-liberty","tag-the-mercury","tag-triple-double","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-playoffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156305","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=156305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}