INESCO and Liberty look to get back to the finals… and more

NEW YORK – Sabrina Ionescu received the ball on the left wing from teammate Breanna Stewart and lofted the shot. A 3-pointer put the New York Liberty up 11 over the Las Vegas Aces early in the fourth quarter in Game 1 of the WNBA semifinals. When Ionescu returned to defense, she pointed to New York icon Spike Lee. Wearing a signed Ionescu jersey, Lee rose from his courtside seat and gestured back in her direction.

Ionesco is not finished.

Just 90 seconds later, she received the ball from Leonie Fibic just wide of the top of the arc and with three-time World Player of the Year Aja Wilson, she fired home a shot from 30 feet, sending the crowd of 14,000 at the Barclays Center into the goal. Vertigo and force a timeout in Las Vegas.

Moments after New York’s 87-77 win on Sunday, in which Ionescu scored 21 points and dished out five assists, ESPN’s Holly Rowe interviewed Ionescu and Stewart at halfcourt, asking Ionescu what it feels like to get hot and turn into an “orchestra conductor.” A Barclays believer. The crowd roared before Rowe could finish the question, while Stewart imitated the conductor’s movements.

“This is what it looks like,” Ionescu said, raising her hands in the air before applauding the crowd.

The Liberty are now two wins away from avenging last year’s WNBA Finals loss to the Aces and returning to the championship series. From a chance to break the franchise’s postseason curse and win its first title. From Ionescu to having a chance to secure the one thing that had eluded her in her young career.

Ionescu, the team’s longest-tenured player, is living up to the potential New York saw when it drafted her No. 1 four years ago. She’s the heartbeat of Freedom, their offensive engine, “kind of the engine with this team,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said Saturday. “Sabrina is the head of the snake.”

He plays

Breanna Stewart’s 34-point performance leads Liberty into Game 1

Breanna Stewart scored a game-high 34 points in Liberty’s Game 1 win over the Aces.

Scene and The setting on Sunday at Barclays was a far cry from what Ionescu experienced at the start of her career.

After being drafted first overall in 2020, Ionescu was sidelined with a serious ankle injury three games into the season, and the Liberty fell to a 2-20 record, marking some of the franchise’s darkest days. Even when Ionescu returned in 2021, she wasn’t at her 100%. New York posted losing records the next two seasons, reaching the playoffs but not making it out of the first round.

Ionescu began to find her footing in 2022, when she earned her first WNBA and All-Star nod. With the Liberty moving from an afterthought to a superteam in 2023, Ionescu has established herself as a premier 3-point shooter, highlighted by her record-breaking performance in the WNBA 3-point contest and her 44.8% clip from deep on the season, third-best by any player. In the league.

Ionescu’s 18.2 points per game in 2024 is a career high, but her growth into a more well-rounded player has made her season special. She has taken on more playmaking duties, especially with Courtney Vandersloot and Petnija Laney Hamilton in and out of the lineup, and has shown more commitment on the defensive end. But Ionescu really shined inside the arc, getting lower than ever and executing a floater. Her 36-point outburst in New York’s first-round win over the Atlanta Dream was a case in point, as 21 of her points were from two-pointers or from the free throw line.

Ionescu’s full recovery from the ankle injury allowed her to build strength, work on a quicker first step and regain her confidence in the offseason.

“I relied a lot on my shot because it was last year, so I stuck with it, but I think being able to continue to get into the paint and learn ways to attack the corners, use my body, use my length. Creating scoring chances was huge.” Ionesco said on Sunday. “I put a lot of work in the offseason to get back to that. Obviously I did a lot of that in college, and then getting hurt took me out a little bit, confidence-wise, from being able to take hits and take off on one leg and land on one leg inside the paint, from “It’s nice to see the work I did come to life, especially in the playoffs.”

On a team that featured two of the best players in Stewart and Jonquil Jones, as well as one of the best passers in league history in Vandersloot, Ionescu’s breakout year helped elevate the Liberty into a more potent offensive group. She was one of two players in the league (Caitlin Clark is the other) to average at least 16 points and 6 assists on the year. Along the way, she cemented her status as a top-tier player in the WNBA, coming in sixth in MVP voting.

“It’s been incredible to watch her make such a big leap this year,” Vandersloot said. “There were a lot of games where she single-handedly won the game late. She took on a lot of the load. She just managed to find different ways to be effective, and that’s one of the things that I was very impressed with.”

Hammon added: “She’s what gets them going — with her speed, her ability to read, her ability to put defenses in different dilemmas, her willingness to make the right play. Her presence and how she led this team this year to the best record in the league.”

He plays

Sabrina Ionescu’s historic night sends Liberty to the semifinals

Sabrina Ionescu became the second player with 35 points and 5 assists in a straight win as Liberty swept the Dream.

Freedom didn’t do that Ionescu added that not acknowledging their loss to the Aces in the 2023 WNBA Finals left them “with a scar,” Vandersloot said, and that they have “unfinished business” to deal with in 2024.

But Ionescu’s motivation is multi-layered.

Vandersloot and Stewart, two of the team’s 2023 free agent acquisitions, have titles from previous WNBA stops, and Stewart won four straight in college. But Ionescu never had a chance to compete for a championship her season at Oregon State.

After leading the Ducks to their first Final Four appearance in 2019, Ionescu was eligible to leave for the WNBA after her junior season but returned to play alongside Satou Sabally and Ruthy Hebard. Her Ducks were coming off a Pac-12 tournament crown and ranked No. 2 in the country when the NCAA Tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m still not really finished with it,” Ionescu told ESPN in June. “Knowing that I came back for that reason – to try to win a national championship – we were so close, I thought we were the better team. We played really well, stuck together and knew what our goal was. Took away the opportunity to at least try to win it’s just sad?”

“Every time I hear players talk about college and winning a national championship and what that means — especially with it never happening at Oregon — that’s one of the things I can’t claim. And hopefully, now in New York, I just feel like if we can win With a championship here, it would be like giving some piece of something back to the whole ‘me’ that hasn’t been able to go out and compete for one.”

As the college game’s leading triple-double leader, Ionescu “has a case as one of the greatest college players in history,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves told ESPN last October.

But Ionescu needed time to recover from her injury, and frustration and disappointment prevailed during her early years in the NBA. The team could have let go of a presumed franchise player for lack of production, but the Liberty had “such an unwavering amount of support for me and stuck with me through that difficult time,” she told ESPN in a May 2023 interview.

“We will be even more thankful if we can win this year,” Ionescu said at the time. “This will just be for all those people who have stuck with me and believed in me through this journey.”

The championship was elusive last season. But 2024 could have a different outcome for the Liberty, largely due to Ionescu.

“She’s got the mentality. You can come with all the talent, but if you don’t have the mentality, you don’t know how to win,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said. “She holds herself to high standards, high standards. She’s been in big games before, so we’ll build on that experience.”

ESPN’s Michael Voebel and Katie Barnes contributed to this report.