New York Liberty advance to WNBA Finals with 76-62 win over Las Vegas Aces

The Las Vegas Aces are no more. Now there’s just one step left.

It doesn’t feel formulaic when you’re in the thick of it.

And yet, the Basketball Reference page commemorating the 2024 WNBA Semifinals series between the New York Liberty and the Las Vegas Aces will read that way, aside from all the Hall-of-Fame names listed.

New York, the league’s #1 seed and clear best team, pulled off a true gentlewoman’s sweep of their tough but ultimately inferior opponent. The Liberty handled Game 1 with relative ease, but Game 2 was a dogfight that the home team pulled out nonetheless before the series shifted to Las Vegas. There, the Aces — fueled by an inimitable level of desperation — cruised to a Game 3 to make it a series.

“They came out and did what they’re supposed to,” said Sandy Brondello on Friday night. “Now, it’s how we come back on Sunday.”

Indeed, the Liberty came back on Sunday, winning what was a nail-biter for three-and-a-half quarters by throwing the haymaker midway through the fourth. Las Vegas, the dynasty that they are and the cumulative beating that took on them, gave all they had, then tapped into the reserves. Then they succumbed.

What a neatly packaged story, eh? How considerate of the Aces and Liberty to gift sportswriters a clear narrative for our series-wrap ups.

Except the two-hour, series-clinching win felt like a day. A nauseous, sweaty day, and perhaps this is where sportswriting falls short. I wrote after Game 3 that Game 4 would be hell, but that’s what the Liberty were always going to need to go through in order to vanquish the Aces. I think hell is supposed to be monotonous, though.

Breanna Stewart tried to capture what Basketball Reference cannot in postgame, saying, “Liberty basketball can be seen in a number of different ways. You know? Yeah, we want to play fast, we want to hit degrees, we want to run, we want to do all these things. But you know what? We want to win, and if it takes to win ugly…” her voice trailing off. Maybe she considered that “ugly” doesn’t capture the full scope either.

It was ugly, though, believe that. The Liberty lead by just three after a first half in which they made a bunch of threes and the Aces didn’t. Why? Because seven sloppy turnovers led directly to a dozen Vegas points.

In that first half, Jonquel Jones could not avoid the foul trouble that is frequently the biggest obstacle between her and All-WNBA performances, nor the frustration that comes with it. It limited her to 28 total minutes in Sunday’s Game 4, a few seconds of which were spent on the floor after running into her own head coach…

Leonie Fiebich suffered through foul trouble as well, months after the German rookie initially expressed surprise that the W “wasn’t as physical” as she thought.

If only she knew then, in mid-July, that she’d be watching her team flop around from the bench in the most pivotal game of the season because their plus-minus was bagged for some ticky-tack whistles. Fiebich picked up her fourth foul with the Liberty leading by five points midway through the third quarter. To that point, New York had won her minutes by 16.

I don’t know if ‘ugly’ is the right word for all that. Absurd, maybe.

Through the absurdity, the Aces never took another lead after jumping ahead 3-2 in the opening seconds. Not when they cut a ten-point lead to one in the first half, and would have jumped out in front if not for a heads-up steal from Sabrina Ionescu that ignited a fast-break the other way, one of a couple game-changing defensive plays she made on the night…

Ionescu, after a no-show in Game 3, was at career-best levels once again on Sunday. Point to the four turnovers if you wish, but her 22/7/2 line doesn’t do nearly enough justice for the guard that outplayed every coverage she saw from the Aces.

She shot 5-of-8 from deep, and a couple early makes opened up the paint for her drives. Sometimes, you saw it all on the same possession..

Ionescu didn’t get a ton of help from her teammates, who left plenty of kick-out, catch-and-shoot threes on the table. Betnijah Laney-Hamilton in particular struggled, providing little-to-no offense on 1-of-7 shooting.

Even as New York’s offense cratered with Jones and Fiebich on the bench, as they reverted back to stagnation, Ionescu did enough in come-set-a-screen-for-me-and-I’ll-figure-it-out mode to keep their heads above the rising tide.

Though they might’ve started to drown if this Jackie Young 60-footer to close the third quarter wasn’t half-a-second late…

Absurd I tell ya.

Both teams desperately needed a spark. Kennedy Burke had replaced Jonquel Jones for stretches, and she was inches away from providing it, but her high-flying put-back attempts rolled around the rim and out, as she was exiled back to the bench with nothing but pats-on-the-back to show for her efforts.

Meanwhile, the Aces didn’t have anything around their two Finals MVPs in Chelsea Gray and A’ja Wilson. Young’s best moment of the day was that shot that didn’t count, finishing 1-of-10 but mostly invisible. Kelsey Plum was visible, but when you saw her, she was probably missing a shot, going 5-of-16.

In the end, Courtney Vandersloot notched another playoff moment, coming off the bench to play the game’s final 13 minutes. Brondello couldn’t take her out, not after the Liberty doubled their four-point lead on two straight Vandersloot drives. It wasn’t clear at the time, but that was the start of the Liberty’s knockout punch, not just a slightly deeper breath.

Las Vegas stopped scoring and continued not to score, posting a 24-point second half when it was all said in done. More than occasionally, they missed open shots, but New York’s frantic defense also stalled them out, nobody more so than Breanna Stewart…

If Stewie was thinking about her own performance when she called the win “ugly,” she sadly does not know ball, despite her greatness. She played 39 minutes and posted 19/14/5/1/4, not her most efficient shooting game but continuously bailing New York out on defense. After the game, the wall came down for a just a second, and she talked her talk…

“Just the way that the series went last year, kind of going through all of that … I have receipts on the things that were said. The entire team does.”

Stewart was referencing her own poor performance in conjunction with the death of her father-in-law during last year’s playoffs, a trying moment for her family that compounded the pain of her lowest professional moment. And whether you think the talk was fair or Stewie’s reaction should have been different, so on and so forth, the legend finally flashed a brief middle finger to the world after the Game 4 win.

“We talked a lot of smack last year, I’m sure they heard it,” said Becky Hammon postgame. “And they got to smack us.”

That’s what made the ending of Game 4 so satisfying for the Liberty. Jonquel Jones and Leonie Fiebich got their moments too, re-entering and making game-sealing plays down the stretch as the Liberty turned an absurd, chaotic, perhaps ugly venture into a celebration of their team that’s been building all year…

Ionescu hitting daggers, Vandersloot capping off a trying year with moments of glory, Fiebich earning one hell of a reputation, Stewart and Jones re-earning theirs, even Laney-Hamilton giving what she could on a half-dead right knee.

As Hammon added after the game, “it’s not personal,” and she’s not lying. There were hugs, even congratulations aplenty as the final buzzer sounded, a true game-respect-game moment…

…down to the Liberty saying all the right things afterwards.

“They’ve made us a better team…seeing their excellence year after year, what they’ve done is not easy.” – Sabrina Ionescu.

“We went to the Finals last year and didn’t do nothing.” – Breanna Stewart.

“If we don’t win [the Finals], there’s no satisfaction, is there?” – Sandy Brondello.

Yes, the New York Liberty the last stretch of road ahead of them, and it will be tough. But the WNBA Finals aren’t supposed to be easy, just like securing revenge on the Las Vegas Aces was supposed to be hell.

Though I guess it was a little more fun than that.

Next Up

Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images

The Minnesota Lynx…or the Connecticut Sun! That series is set to go five after the Sun saved their season on Sunday night, and we’ll find out the Liberty’s Finals opponent on Tuesday night.

What we do know, for now, is that the Liberty will host Game 1 of the WNBA Finals at the Barclays Center, and it will start at 8:00 p.m. ET on Thursday night.

• Box Score: New York Liberty 76, Las Vegas Aces 62 – WNBA