MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 As the clock wound down Wednesday night, Sabrina Ionescu smiled and started to clap at Natasha Cloud while the Lynx started to celebrate on the other end of the floor.<\/p>\n
The shorthanded Liberty may have dropped their third straight game, losing 100-93 in a 2024 WNBA Finals rematch.<\/p>\n
But New York, down three key players, competed for the full 40 minutes. And that was a win in Ionescu\u2019s book.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s ever a good loss, this was one of those losses that you can live with,\u201d said Ionescu, who scored a team-high 31 points and had five rebounds and four assists. \u201cEveryone played as hard as they could. Natasha was sick and played through it. Just really proud of the way we were able to fight back and that\u2019s the standard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandy Brondello did her best to brush off the Liberty\u2019s nearly 40-minute meeting after a pathetic first-half showing in Dallas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of meetings,\u201d Brondello said before the game. \u201cWe had another meeting yesterday. \u2026 We had just a little longer one because our performance was unacceptable for a team that wants to win a championship regardless of who\u2019s in and who\u2019s out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meetings have all been about accountability.<\/p>\n
This team \u2014 when at full strength \u2014 has the makings to win another championship. But their lack of effort and stretches of complacency were happening far too often.<\/p>\n
Napheesa Collier drives on Jonquel Jones during the Liberty\u2019s 100-93 road loss to the Lynx on July 30, 2025. Brad Rempel-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
The main point Brondello was trying to make was \u201clet\u2019s be better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Liberty did that Wednesday.<\/p>\n
New York has deployed about a dozen different starting lineups this season. They\u2019ve been fully healthy for only two games and are playing without Breanna Stewart, Nyara Sabally and Kennedy Burke for the foreseeable future because of injuries.<\/p>\n
Sabrina Ionescu drives to the basket during the Liberty\u2019s loss to the Lynx. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Liberty were at risk of playing Wednesday without Cloud, who\u2019s under the weather. But Cloud opted to play and started alongside Ionescu, Marine Johann\u00e8s, Leonie Fiebich and Jonquel Jones.<\/p>\n
New York set the right tone from the start and the smaller lineup allowed the Liberty to play with more pace and space.<\/p>\n
Johann\u00e8s heated up early, scoring eight of her 14 points in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Natasha Cloud goes up for a layup during the Liberty\u2019s road loss to the Lynx. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really just proud of our start today,\u201d said Cloud, who contributed 12 points, seven assists and four rebounds. \u201cClearly in Dallas, we got embarrassed by another slow start. And that\u2019s been our Achilles heel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lynx, who were playing at full strength, led by nine at halftime. Their lead swelled to 15 in the second half.<\/p>\n
But the shorthanded Liberty didn\u2019t surrender.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCovering the Liberty like never before\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Madeline Kenney’s Inside the Liberty, a weekly Sports+ newsletter.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Over a two-minute span, New York cut a 15-point deficit to four.<\/p>\n
But that would be the closest they would get.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never gave up,\u201d Brondello said. \u201cSo while we lost, I guess, it was a good performance after a terrible game that we had to come out. Yes, we got down, but we stayed in the game. And we started making shots. They were making shots, too. \u2026 We were right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Courtney Williams shoots while being defended by Jonquel Jones (35) in the second quarter of the Liberty\u2019s road loss to the Lynx. AP<\/p>\n
There are plenty of lessons to be learned over the course of a season.<\/p>\n
The Liberty can\u2019t control how a game is officiated or the injuries they\u2019re dealing with. But they showed Wednesday what Liberty basketball is supposed to look like.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the standard we have to come out with every night,\u201d Ionescu said. \u201cBut with a million reasons why we could have come in here and gone through the motions and made excuses for ourselves, and we didn\u2019t. And I\u2019m proud of each and every player that was out there tonight, playing as hard as they could, doing whatever they could to get back to playing Liberty basketball. And we did that tonight. We got back to playing Liberty basketball, and now we\u2019re going to have to do that every single night.\u201d<\/p>\n
New York\u2019s road trip continues with the Liberty heading to Connecticut, where they\u2019re scheduled to play Friday and Sunday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 As the clock wound down Wednesday night, Sabrina Ionescu smiled and started to clap at Natasha…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,736,3457,3543,82,630],"class_list":["post-36755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-minnesota-lynx","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-ny-sports-minute","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36755","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=36755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}