Leonie Fiebich stopped for a moment outside the 3-point line. She took a look. With just over 90 seconds left and the Liberty ahead by six, Lynx guard Courtney Williams dribbled the ball off her foot. The ball kept rolling across the mid-court line until Fiebich picked it up.
Even though Breanna Stewart was cutting toward the basket and Fiebich didn’t have to rush into a shot because of how quickly a late lead fell apart two days before, she did.
From the sidelines, Liberty coach Sandy Brondello saw Stewart cut.
Then she saw that Fiebich was getting higher. Guard Courtney Vandersloot said it was a “huge” shot. She also said, “Gutsy.” And the Liberty had a real knife for the first time this series when it went through the net.
Up to that point, Game 2 of the WNBA Finals had been a lot like Game 1 for the Liberty. In the first half, they got ahead by 17 points. They saw the Lynx slowly (and sometimes quickly) chip away until it got to two points in the fourth quarter. At that point, the Liberty season was heading for a turning point.
But Fiebich’s shot was the finishing blow in their 80-66 win on Sunday in front of a record 18,046 people at Barclays Center. The series is now tied at one game apiece and will go to Minnesota.
The Liberty got away by following the plan that worked all season and got them to this point in the first place.
Star Lynx player Napheesa Collier was only able to score 16 points. She was on track to have the best scoring postseason in league history. The balanced attack, which was led by Sabrina Ionescu in the first quarter and then Breanna Stewart (21 points) and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton (20 points) for the rest of the game, gave their team just the right amount of lead and distance.
Vandersloot said, “If we don’t play the right way and do the right things, then that can turn quickly. So we’re obviously just… knowing that if we do the right things, we’ll be in a good position.”
It wouldn’t have looked good to lose a second time to Minnesota. As it stands, the Lynx are the only team this season to beat the Liberty more than once. The Liberty also had to get over their emotional hangover from Thursday, when Stewart missed a free throw that would have won the game after the Liberty lost a double-digit lead.
Ionescu, on the other hand, scored 12 points in the first quarter, when the Liberty shot 72% and quickly built a 10-point lead.
Like in Game 1, they made it hard for the Lynx to make goals. They were ahead by as many as 17 points and 10 points at halfway, the same amount of points they had Thursday.
“I’m upset that we let it get to 17,” Cheryl Reeve, head coach of the Lynx, said. “This makes me more than upset.” “I’m mad.”
The Lynx did make a run again in the second half, though, even though Collier had to sit out the last few minutes of the third quarter because he had four fouls. In the fourth, she came back and made a turnaround shot with just over six minutes left to tie the game at four points. In the end, Courtney Williams scored with 3:40 left to bring them within 68-66.
Then Laney-Hamilton had a chance from her spot in the corner, which has become her signature shot. It was short, but it was enough to get something off after Ionescu drove into the paint and threw a no-look pass. Vandersloot thought, “Hell yeah” from the bench when the shot went through the net.
“In Game 1, it felt like we slowed down to a pace that isn’t quite right for us,” Stewart said of the Liberty attack near the end of the game. “We want to play quickly.” The ball needs to move. This is where we want to go. Of course we want to score. Making sure that we always play quickly, no matter what. We get good shots. We get that defense going.
The Liberty didn’t fall apart again; instead, they kept their lead.
They made the shots that won the games for them. The Liberty didn’t need two free throws at the end this time. This time, they didn’t fall behind 2-0 like they did last year, when the Aces won Game 1 easily and ruined their franchise-best regular season and everything the superteam worked toward.
And on an afternoon when a Lynx win would have pretty much erased the Liberty’s room for error, they made sure that there is still some of it, at least until Wednesday. Their season is still going strong.
