Sandy Brondello and the New York Liberty sat in the visitors locker room at the College Park Center for nearly 40 minutes on Monday night.
After a brutal loss to the Dallas Wings, which marked their second straight loss, they had some things to discuss.
“This has been going on for a few games,” Brondello said, via Winsider’s Myles Ehrlich. “We haven’t started off well, so we had a team meeting.”
The Wings, after building up a 30-point lead, held on to grab a 92-82 win over the Liberty in Arlington, Texas, on Monday night. It marked New York’s second straight dropped game, following a loss at the buzzer to the Los Angeles Sparks on Saturday.
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The Liberty opened up Monday’s game on the wrong side of a 21-4 run, and they never recovered. The Wings held New York to just 36 points in the first half and took a 27-point lead into the break.
Though Dallas’ offense slowed way down in the second half — the Wings put up only seven points in the fourth quarter as a group, and briefly allowed New York to make it a two possession game — their lead was far too big for the Liberty to overcome. They held on to pick up the 10-point win behind 20 points and 14 assists from star Arike Ogunbowale. That moved them to 8-19 on the season, which is just one win shy of matching last year’s win total.
Jonquel Jones led the Liberty with 18 points and seven assists, and Sabrina Ionescu added 17 points while shooting 5-of-13 from the field. Jones called the loss “embarrassing” and “frustrating” when they got out of their meeting.
“They were just exploiting us in post ups and we had no resistance … we weren’t as connected as we wanted to be,” Brondello said of their slow start. “It really just starts with the effort.”
Now in the Liberty’s defense, they are without star Breanna Stewart, who left early in the first quarter of their loss to the Sparks on Saturday with a lower-leg injury. She has avoided a significant injury, but specifics aren’t known and it’s unclear when she’ll be back.
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This is, though, the third time this season that the Liberty have dropped back-to-back games. They have a battle with the Minnesota Lynx in Minneapolis on Wednesday night, too. The Lynx currently hold a league-best 22-5 record and now a four-game lead over the Liberty in the standings, thanks to their latest two losses. The Lynx have lost just one of their 15 games at the Target Center this season, too.
If Monday’s team meeting didn’t work out and Stewart is still sidelined, that deficit in the standings could very easily grow. Ionescu, though, isn’t trying to think about that.
“We’ve got to focus on ourselves,” she said. “We shouldn’t be playing any differently because of who we’re matched up with, what their record is, how talented they are, there’s no excuse for how we came out … Any team can beat anyone in this league, and we were able to see that tonight.”
