Every WNBA team is going to face adversity at some point in a given season. The 2025 season, the longest in league history at 44 games, is no different — not even for the defending champion New York Liberty.<\/p>\n
Amid Breanna Stewart’s injury-related absence, the Liberty have lost three consecutive games. New York lost eight games during the 2024 season; the Liberty lost for the ninth time in 2025 amid a 100-93 defeat to the Lynx in Minnesota on Wednesday, the teams’ first meeting since the 2024 WNBA Finals last October.<\/p>\n
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At 17-9, the Liberty still own the best record in the Eastern Conference and the second-best mark in the WNBA. New York has the league’s second-best offense by offensive rating and its third-ranked defense; the Liberty will add former WNBA champion Emma Meesseman<\/a> in the coming days to augment its talent-rich core.<\/p>\n Still, New York fell behind by 27 points to the Dallas Wings on Monday, and its deficit in Minnesota grew as large as 15 points before star guard Sabrina Ionescu sparked a late fourth-quarter rally that fell just short. After starting the year 9-0, the Liberty are 8-9 since.<\/p>\n So is Ionescu concerned? Not especially.<\/p>\n “If there’s ever a good loss, this was one of those losses that you can live with,” Ionescu<\/a> told reporters from Target Center on Wednesday night. “We came out, we competed for 40 minutes, everyone played as hard as they could. Natasha (Cloud) was sick and played through it. That’s the standard.”<\/p>\n Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello echoed that sentiment, expressing contentment that her players did not give in during the first of four regular-season meetings with the Lynx. Going into Friday night’s game against the league-worst Connecticut Sun, she hopes the effort will translate into a bounce-back win.<\/p>\n