The New York Liberty made 12 of 24 shots from the field in the first quarter of Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Thursday to help them take a 13-point advantage in 10 minutes of basketball.
Then – as it has done all season – the Lynx defense dug in its teeth.
Minnesota forced what was the best offense of the entire season to go 22 of 66 from the field over the final 35 minutes of the game en route to a exciting overtime victory.
“We’re a better team than we showed,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said.
Maybe not against Minnesota.
Frankly, this is exactly the offense New York has been showing all season against the Lynx. The mighty Liberty has consistently been humiliated by what is now clearly the best defensive team in the league.
For the game, New York shot 37.8% from the field on Thursday. This is the fourth worst shooting performance of the season. A trend has formed. Four of New York’s eight worst shooting games in 2024 came against Minnesota. In each of those four contests, New York shot just 39.1 percent from the floor.
Even in the lone “exception” – the Commissioner’s Cup final, won by Minnesota – the Liberty shot 41.4 percent from the floor, which remains well below their season average. team by 44.8%.
New York can’t find good shots against Minnesota. And it doesn’t seem like Liberty has a great solution to this problem.
Brondello noted that Minnesota simply “turned up the energy” after Thursday’s opener.
“They outplayed us,” she said.
This caused New York, in the coach’s eyes, to force the action. The Liberty also stopped moving the ball. They couldn’t get downhill with the ball and then they were missing shots.
This was all a result of Minnesota’s defensive pressure. When teams feel uncomfortable, they often deviate from the plan. And rarely in basketball does that translate into good offense.
“I think they took us out of what we wanted to do. They were really aggressive. They blow things up. We weren’t able to get clear passes,” Brondello said. “We tried to go down and then they did some stunts and came back and we just stagnated a little bit. I thought we were slow.
It’s hard to act quickly when you’re out of rhythm and don’t know what to do next. Finally, Breanna Stewart tries to compete one-on-one. best defensive player in the world. Napheesa Collier. The nation saw how that didn’t work out for New York on Thursday.
The Lynx have pushed the Liberty into this mode countless times this season. Minnesota’s physicality is not something everyone can adapt to and play with. The Liberty – five games into this season – appears ill-equipped to deal with it, no matter how much talent they may trot onto the field in any given lineup.
It remains to be seen whether this can be changed within a best-of-5 series.
“Defensively, they executed better than us,” Brondello said. “That’s what it comes down to.”
