Carla Leite called for the iso.<\/p>\n
Dribbling out the clock, the 5\u20199 guard shooed away her teammates with confidence. The only thing standing between the 22-year-old and the Barclays Center basket?<\/p>\n
Stewart is an elite defender \u2014 one of the WNBA\u2019s most consistent. She\u2019s also 6\u20194. But that didn\u2019t matter. Leite, a 17.3% career three-point shooter in the WNBA, pulled up for three.<\/p>\n
Leite smiled, knowing she had just iced the game. Thanks to her big triple, the Portland Fire led the New York Liberty by 6 points with 14.4 seconds to spare. Liberty guard Marine Johannes responded with a three-pointer of her own, but the game was out of reach.<\/p>\n
The pull-up three was Leite\u2019s second consecutive clutch basket in the final seconds of Monday night\u2019s 81-74 Fire win over the Liberty. Twenty-five seconds earlier, Leite drove to the basket to give the Fire a 5-point lead with 40 seconds to play.<\/p>\n
And, Monday wasn\u2019t the first time she took over in the clutch, either.<\/p>\n
Two weeks earlier, when the Fire pulled out the franchise\u2019s first-ever win, Leite also stepped up down the stretch against the Liberty. She drove to the basket with 27.1 seconds to play, tying up the game against New York. A Sarah Ashlee Barker game-winner ended up securing that May 12th win.<\/p>\n
Leite is having a strong all-around season. On Monday, she scored a team-high 18 points on 8-14 shooting; the Fire outscored the Liberty by 8 points in her 22 minutes on the floor.<\/p>\n
Leite\u2019s points, rebounds, and assists per game have all more than doubled; she averaged 7.2 points, 1.3 rebounds, and 2 assists per game, and has seen those numbers rise to 15 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 4.8 assists per game this season. Her efficiency has also risen; she averaged 38.7% in her rookie campaign and is shooting 5% better this year in Portland.<\/p>\n
The Fire are 3-2 in the five games the sophomore guard has played.<\/p>\n
Leite is far from the only reason why the Fire, one of two 2026 expansion teams, have begun the season 4-3. Bridget Carleton, the No. 1 overall pick in the expansion draft, is averaging 16.5 points per game, 10 more than she averaged last year as a role player on the Minnesota Lynx. Emily Engslter, Megan Gustafson, Nyadiew Puoch, and Luisa Geiselsoder have all been key contributors.<\/p>\n
And, Ashlee Barker, who is averaging 10.3 points off the bench, has also been a monster in the clutch. In addition to her game-winner earlier in the month, Barker completed an and-one driving layup in the final minute of a crunch-time victory over the Connecticut Sun. In Monday\u2019s win over the Liberty, she hit a go-ahead corner three to give the Fire a one-point edge with just under four minutes to spare. The Fire never trailed again.<\/p>\n
But, Leite \u2014 left unprotected by the Golden State Valkyries after her rookie season \u2014 has been the primary scoring option in the clutch.<\/p>\n
And, on Monday, she did it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carla Leite called for the iso. Dribbling out the clock, the 5\u20199 guard shooed away her teammates with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-665519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665519","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=665519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}