{"id":869583,"date":"2026-10-03T17:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T17:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869583\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T17:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T17:06:08","slug":"new-york-liberty-face-the-atlanta-dream-in-game-1-of-the-wnba-semifinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869583\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Liberty face the Atlanta Dream in Game 1 of the WNBA semifinals"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Breanna Stewart<\/a> and the New York Liberty<\/a> have been in this spot often in the last few seasons.<\/p>\n

New York will be making its third appearance in the semifinals of the WNBA<\/a> playoffs in the past four years when the Liberty play the Atlanta Dream<\/a> on Sunday in Game 1 of the best-of-five series.<\/p>\n

\u201cExperience in the playoffs definitely matters,\u201d Stewart said Friday before practice. \u201cThere\u2019s so many things (during a longer series) that you have to stay focused on the end goal.”<\/p>\n

That end goal would be reaching the WNBA Finals and trying to win a second title in three seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this group, for the majority of us, (we\u2019ve) been in this type of series, where it\u2019s not getting too high or too low is the huge important part,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cAnd what we did in the first round is great \u2014 we\u2019re happy to be here \u2014 but that wasn\u2019t a goal for our season to get out of the first round.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York was dominant in the first round while sweeping the Minnesota Lynx<\/a>, becoming the first No. 8 seed to eliminate a No. 1 seed in the league\u2019s 30-year history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe approach that we\u2019re having in these playoffs is pretty much where you want to be,\u201d Stewart added. \u201cWe\u2019re the ones that are staying poised, staying under control at all times. But we\u2019re gonna be aggressive for the full 40 minutes, and if you want something, you\u2019re gonna have to go through us to get it.”<\/p>\n

Atlanta is the newcomer to this round, advancing this far for the first time since 2018. Aware of the team’s lack of playoff experience other than Jordin Canada<\/a>, Dream GM Dan Padover went out and got DeWanna Bonner<\/a> as a free agent in late August. Bonner has played 100 games in the playoffs, the most in league history.<\/p>\n

She joined a stacked lineup that includes Rhyne Howard<\/a>, Allisha Gray<\/a> and Angel Reese<\/a>. That group lifted the Dream to their first playoff win since 2016 when they swept the Washington Mystics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the pace that they were playing with was really good,\u201d Liberty coach Chris DeMarco said. “I think (Bonner) brought a lot of veteran leadership to them, a lot of timely scoring to really settle them into games. I think Howard and Gray are just two really good \u2014 or great guards that we have to slow down. When the game gets tough, they kind of put their heads down and kind of take over that scoring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Downright defensive<\/p>\n

The Atlanta Dream had one of the best defenses in the league this year, anchored by the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Angel Reese. Atlanta led the league in steals per game (9.1), which it converted to 18.1 points per game. The Dream raised that in the playoffs, scoring 27 points off miscues in their Game 1 win over Washington and getting 23 more in the clincher.<\/p>\n

They are very active getting into passing lanes, which makes scoring in transition difficult.<\/p>\n

Late-season familiarity<\/p>\n

The two teams met in the final two games of the regular season with the No. 4 seed on the line, and the Dream won both those contests. Stewart sat out the second game to get some rest heading into the playoffs. Neither team puts much stock in the value of those two games, other than they provided fresh film to both sides from late in the season.<\/p>\n

Moving to a bigger arena<\/p>\n

The Dream will play the first two games of the semifinals in State Farm Arena, home of the Atlanta Hawks. Atlanta played six regular-season games at the arena, which seats more than 17,000 fans. The Dream’s usual home, the Gateway Center Arena, holds about 3,500. Atlanta played Game 1 of its series against the Mystics at State Farm Arena. If the Dream win in the semifinals, it’s unclear what they’ll do for the Finals since singer Sombr is performing there the night of Game 3 and the Hawks have their home opener the same evening as Game 4.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

See AP\u2019s full WNBA coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Breanna Stewart and the New York Liberty have been in this spot often in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[4130,3691,3444,435,11649,230765,4807,436,18118,99,434,13016],"class_list":["post-869583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-allisha-gray","tag-angel-reese","tag-atlanta-dream","tag-breanna-stewart","tag-dewanna-bonner","tag-event_preview","tag-jordin-canada","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-rhyne-howard","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-womens-national-basketball-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869583","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=869583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}