{"id":156958,"date":"2025-09-20T11:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T11:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156958\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T11:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T11:44:10","slug":"thomas-has-triple-double-as-mercury-eliminate-defending-champion-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156958\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas has triple-double as Mercury eliminate defending champion Liberty"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX \u2014 Alyssa Thomas had 20 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in her fifth career playoff triple-double, and the Phoenix Mercury<\/a> advanced to the second round of the WNBA playoffs by eliminating the defending champion New York Liberty<\/a> 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

Thomas has five of the seven WNBA playoff triple-doubles.\u00a0<\/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

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.\u00a0<\/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.\u00a0<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Alyssa Thomas had 20 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in her fifth career playoff triple-double,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-156958","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\/156958","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=156958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}