garnered record-shattering attendance in Philly<\/a>, the 3-on-3 basketball league managed to do it again in Brooklyn.<\/p>\nMonday\u2019s semifinal games didn\u2019t have the same lead-up as the Jan. 30, Philadelphia tour stop. <\/p>\n
Natasha Cloud reacts after Phantom BC won its Unrivaled game March 2 at Barclays Center. Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Unrivaled had less than a month to sell tickets.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest with you, it was somewhat of an internal split room on should we pull the trigger on this?\u201d Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell said.<\/p>\n
Brooklyn\u2019s turnout didn\u2019t disappoint.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was cool for Unrivaled to put this together with [short] notice,\u201d Dearica Hamby said after Vinyl\u2019s loss to Phantom. \u201cIt felt like a W game\u2026 It\u2019s a unique situation to put this together in two weeks, and you would have had no idea the way it turned out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s semifinal games welcomed a sellout crowd of 18,261, with plenty of stars in attendance, including two-time Olympic gold medalist Hilary Knight, Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony, soccer star Alex Morgan and actors Ashton Kutcher and Issa Rae.<\/p>\n
Vinyl BC forward Dearic Hamby fights is pictured during the March 2 Unrivaled game at Barclays Center. Imagn Images<\/p>\n
There were plenty of Liberty sightings, too.<\/p>\n
Ionescu was in the broadcast booth. <\/p>\n
Team owner Clara Wu Tsai, general manager Jonathan Kolb and new head coach Chris DeMarco sat courtside.<\/p>\n
Kelsey Plum reacts after hitting the game-winning shot for Phantom BC during its Unrivaled game March 2. AP<\/p>\n
And the games delivered quite the show.<\/p>\n
Kelsey Plum knocked in the go-ahead 3 to punch Phantom\u2019s ticket to Wednesday\u2019s championship game, which sent the crowd into a frenzy.<\/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
After the game, Plum, who has played four WNBA playoff games at Barclays Center, joked that she\u2019s used to New York fans booing her.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust to be clear, like, most respect. New York fans are different and I\u2019ve always appreciated the competitiveness, so I welcome it with open arms,\u201d Plum said.<\/p>\n
Barclays Center\u2019s electric atmosphere wasn\u2019t a surprise to anyone who has attended Liberty games.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarclays was Barclays. New York was New York. It\u2019s always electric. It\u2019s always a show,\u201d Phantom head coach Roneeka Hodges said. \u201cIt\u2019s even better when the basketball game is high quality, the product is good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Unrivaled commissioner Micky Lawler\u2019s cab pulled up to Barclays Center around 3 p.m. Monday, she noticed a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[4889,436,99,18419,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-503280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-barclays-center","9":"tag-new-york-liberty","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-unrivaled","12":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}