Tucked away on Tuesday night 10:00 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network/Fubo TV/not WNBA League Pass opposite Game 5 of the NHL Finals, two of the WNBA’s best teams were been squaring off.
The New York Liberty, playing the second of two games out West, are certainly in the W’s top tier, riding an eight-game win streak as we near the Commissioner’s Cup Final, which they will kind of host.
The Phoenix Mercury, though? Top tier might be a stretch, but since the return of Britney Griner, the Mercury are 3-1, playing their best ball of the season. With Rebecca Allen, ex-Lib, back in the lineup as well, Nate Tibbets’ vision for his Mercury has come into focus. Behind an embarrassment of riches on the perimeter, they’re capable of unloading an avalanche of threes with one of the league’s scariest interior threats now as a complement.
Said Sandy Brondello before the game: “They’ve got more of an inside-outside attack because they’re playing toward their personnel now, which makes them even more dangerous. They’ve got a lot of players that are shooting, what, 40-plus percent from the 3-point line? So that makes it really dangerous when you’ve got a dominant inside player like that. It’s another good test for us, because I think this is a really dangerous team that’s going to get better and better.”
Phoenix was more than just a test for the Liberty on Tuesday night, and their process of improving reached new heights in a back-and-forth shoot-out that was destined to go down to the wire from tip.
Immediately, Breanna Stewart got going with a welcome sight: threes. After entering the game at shooting 17.5% from deep, a career-worst by a couple orders of magnitude, she shot 4-of-4 from deep on her way to a 28/4/5/5/1 stat-line on 10-of-15 shooting, even hotter than the 103º it was outdoors.
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