The New York Liberty are fighting, clawing for every inch of the path to repeating as WNBA champions. For Tuesday’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks, they’ll be down to eight players, as heart-warming bright spot Isabelle Harrison, naturally, is back on the East Coast in concussion protocol. Of course.
The Liberty will then have to play the Las Vegas Aces on Wednesday night in a dreaded, two-city back-to-back. Their current grasp on the tie for the WNBA’s #2 seed is precarious at best.
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But beyond Standings Watch, their most consequential games of the season — no matter who’s playing — were always going to be against the Minnesota Lynx. They’ll play the Lynx twice in a row after this brief West Coast swing, but they’ve already lost to the unreachable #1 seed twice. Breanna Stewart missed both those contests, and will likely miss the next two as well. Same goes for Napheesa Collier, who only played in the first one. What’s there to really learn from these matchups, then? you might ask.
Wrong attitude!
One crucial matchup change
Natasha Cloud is starting next to Sabrina Ionescu in the Liberty backcourt, not Betnijah Laney-Hamilton. This is not a 1:1 substitution, and the matchups have thus been rejiggered. Cloud does not guard Kayla McBride as Laney-Hamilton did, but Courtney Williams. Meanwhile, Leonie Fiebich now defends McBride, with Ionescu sticking to Bridget Carleton.
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This isn’t necessarily a downgrade or upgrade for New York, just different. Fiebich might be the best guard defender in the league, but Cloud is strong at the point-of-attack too. She can fight through screens against Williams (or Natasha Hiedeman) to prevent Minnesota possessions from getting off the ground, or to escort Williams into uninspiring looks, both of which we see here…
But this is a less versatile look for New York. Tash (and the big defender) have to be near-perfect, at risk of letting Phee — if she’s setting the screen — roll downhill. And in the July 30 matchup, they weren’t. Synergy Sports tracked Phee as shooting six times off the roll in that matchup; she made five of them and got fouled on the other.
With Cloud on Williams, New York can’t switch Williams-Collier ball-screens, the lifeblood of Minnesota’s offense. With the 6’4” Fiebich guarding Williams, they could. At least, they could mix it in more often, and bring a bit less help against Phee in the post.
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Elsewhere, Fiebich has stepped into Betnijah Laney-Hamilton’s assignment, guarding Kayla McBride. Now, the Liberty didn’t exactly shut McBride down in the 2024 Finals; she scored 19+ points in all but one game. It’s more about the toll it takes on Fiebich, who “hasn’t been this exhausted in [her] entire career,” but now has to spend Minnesota matchups chasing McBride through a maze of screens.
The results have been mixed; McBride has averaged 21 points in the two matchups so far on very efficient shooting. Fiebich has had some good, sticky possessions, and some breakdowns…
Some of it is just because McBride is great, and Cheryl Reeve is really smart in how she uses McBride. For example, one benefit of McBride often guarding Sabrina Ionescu is when Minnesota gets a stop, they get that incredibly favorable cross-match on the other end.
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Ionescu and Cloud are too spacey to guard McBride very often. One momentary lapse and one of the league’s greatest shooters ever has an open three, or causes a breakdown that leads to a layup. We’ve already covered how much Fiebich has on her plate this season, but in a potential playoff rematch with the Lynx, the German sensation will have to search for even more of an appetite.
And maybe more?
Well, there is one other possibility as to who guards Kayla McBride in a playoff series.
In the 2025 playoffs, just as the 2024 playoffs, Sandy Brondello will face the question of whether to supplant a veteran starting point guard from the closing lineup. In 2024, she really had no choice; Leonie Fiebich was just a better fit than Courtney Vandersloot. This season, she’ll have to see if an Emma Meesseman/Breanna Stewart/Jonquel Jones front-court truly works.
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If it does, Natasha Cloud will likely see her minutes reduced. Fiebich guards Williams again, Ionescu on Carleton, and Stewie on McBride. This is tough, because you largely take away Stewie’s ability to roam in help and turn passing lanes and layup attempts to dust; it’s also a whole hell of a lot to ask of 31-year-old Stewie, but she might just be indestructible. (Side note: I’m still skeptical about DiJonai Carrington’s viability in this potential series, because it provides Stewie a matchup to roam off of.)
Emma Meesseman then guards Alanna Smith, and Jonquel Jones on Phee. Now that’s interesting. We saw that in spurts in the 2024 Finals, and we saw it on July 30 too. Cheryl Reeve, if you haven’t heard, is a very good coach, and Phee is ever the malleable superstar; when she wasn’t rolling out of screens, she found offense on the perimeter, putting great stress on the 2024 Finals MVP…
In any case, a playoff rematch, whether it happens in the Finals or even in the Semi-Finals, suddenly a realistic possibility with New York just a game clear of fourth-place, will not just be a retread. New York’s new additions — Cloud and Meesseman in particular — change the structure of this matchup, as do Carrington and even backup big Jessica Shepard.
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Sitting Courtney Vandersloot last season was a brutal choice for Sandy Brondello to make. But it was the obvious choice. That won’t be the case this season, not with Breanna Stewart only returning for the last two weeks of the season at best, and the matchups being more up in the air. If it’s Jonquel Jones on Phee, expect Minnesota to be ready.
Minnesota, exposing the flaws
The one thing that hasn’t changed from 2024 to 2025 is that the Minnesota Lynx can pounce on every mistake the New York Liberty make. Again, as I’ve covered, Liberty players have freedom to adjust on the fly. Traditional pick-and-roll coverage can be audibled to a switch mid-play, the bigs can trap when they see fit, etc.
“Being new to the group I was really, like, interested in how that all came about, because I saw it on film when I was studying the team before I got here. This is a really, really high IQ team. So I think — credit to the coaching staff for leaning into that, letting them play on feel,” said assistant coach Sonia Raman back in June.
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Of course, she added that “the area for growth is, like, really trying to get to a high level with our communication, where we don’t have that mistake, you know? And you’re not going to play mistake-free, right? But that’s what you get with the feel. You get, what you feel you get all the good stuff, and sometimes you get those.”
Over the Liberty’s latest stretch of choppy play, we’re seeing more of those. It’s a habit New York has to fix before the playoffs, tired as they are. They can’t just rely on flipping the switch when the stakes get higher. In the second matchup vs. the Lynx, they turned it over 20 times, an easy point of fixation, but mistakes happened all over the court…
It wasn’t just on offense or in transition, but New York’s half-court defense too: “It’s just an easy fix – it should be an easy fix,” said Emma Meesseman.
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“Just the discipline, attention to detail, like I just said, passing. Pass to the open side, or cut with purpose, play with purpose, stick to plays, pay attention in timeouts, I feel like it’s just that. No matter who we have on the court, no matter what level, players [or] what league, it’s all about hustle. I don’t think you can practice that. So we just have to go out there and fight.”
Listen, this is not what you want to be hearing in August, understandable as it is that the fatigued, injury-ridden Liberty are struggling. But these sorts of mistakes against Minnesota will kill them, not that they needed another reminder after last year’s heart-stopping Finals…
Sunday’s turnovers stuck out like sore thumb, but you have to trust that those mistakes will be cleaned up during playoff time. Forget the Lynx, if the Liberty are playing like that, they can lose in the first round. Same with the defensive miscues.
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But there are also more, let’s say, institutional questions New York still leaves us, despite all their talent. Jonquel Jones took seven shots and four freebies in 32 minutes vs. Minnesota, the second time. Some of that is her own passivity, but it’s also a team-wide blind spot. She has Bridget Carleton switched onto her here, and nobody seems to notice!
1: There are basic mistakes that need to be cleaned up regardless of who New York draws in the playoffs. Just so happens that Minnesota, more than any other opponent, will pounce on them.
2: Should we be more scared of these institutional mistakes? I trust the defending champions to give great effort when it matters, but will they leave points on the table through an inability to attack mismatches, or to get matched up in transition? Teams can be focused, prepared, and effortful, but still make fundamental mistakes; that might be the Liberty’s downfall in 2025.
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One rotational head-scratcher
This is not a major issue, to be clear. It’s probably not the difference between New York winning and losing a title. But I don’t understand how Steph Talbot has usurped Rebekah Gardner in the rotation, which Sandy Brondello made clear in Sunday’s loss to Minnesota.
It was a big matchup with emotional implications, the first time the Lynx had visited Barclays Center since claiming that’s where they got a title stolen from them in 2024. Nationally televised. Everybody’s amped. And Gardner doesn’t check in until garbage time while Stephanie Talbot plays 13 minutes (again, this isn’t the end of the world).
Talbot has had a couple solid games since the Liberty signed her in late July, particularly in an August 5 win vs. the Dallas Wings. The game prior, she had watched as Gardner played 22 minutes in a win against the Connecticut Sun, so to Sandy Brondello’s credit, she’s definitely capable of riding the hot hand.
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But Talbot just hasn’t been a good WNBA player since 2022, at least not as good as Gardner was in the first half of this Liberty season…
If I had to guess, Brondello prefers Talbot not solely because of their shared experience for the Australian national team, but because Talbot is a bit bigger with some more passing and handling skills than Gardner. She crashes the offensive glass hard (though is averaging fewer offensive boards per possession than Bek).
But at some point, the worse player is playing over the better one. Not to mention Gardner rehabbed her achilles injury with the Liberty all last season, was with the team from training camp to the present while playing strong minutes, and is now sitting behind a player that an expansion team chose not to keep. It’s a weird look, no?
If one team is going to test the New York Liberty, best believe it’s going to be the Minnesota Lynx. After two losses to the Lynx, New York is now in danger of falling down the standings; they have to take care of that before even thinking about a playoff rematch.
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Their first opportunity to pick up a win comes on Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Sparks. Tip-off is scheduled for 10:00 p.m ET.
