went down with an injury July 26<\/a>.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCovering the Liberty like never before\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Madeline Kenney’s Inside the Liberty, a weekly Sports+ newsletter.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
With under a minute left and the Lynx up by one, a high pick-and-roll for Courtney Williams resulted in a Liberty defensive breakdown that the Lynx exposed.<\/p>\n
As Alanna Smith rolled to the rim, Leonie Fiebich went to guard Smith in the paint, leaving Kayla McBride wide open. <\/p>\n
Jonquel Jones was slow getting to McBride, whom Williams fed for the 3 that built the Lynx lead to four with 31.9 seconds left and sent the Target Center crowd into a frenzy.<\/p>\n
Sabrina Ionescu of the New York Liberty drives to the basket during the game against the Minnesota Lynx on August 16, 2025 at Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Fiebich\u2019s bucket trimmed it to two. <\/p>\n
Natasha Cloud missed a layup that would\u2019ve made it a one-point game.<\/p>\n
The Lynx ended the game on a 12-2 run.<\/p>\n
Even with the Liberty fouling to stop the clock late, it\u2019s hard not to acknowledge the free-throw discrepancy. <\/p>\n
Jonquel Jones of the New York Liberty rebounds the ball during the game against the Minnesota Lynx on August 16, 2025 at Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Lynx attempted 33 free throws to the Liberty\u2019s eight. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s the second-largest free-throw margin this season.<\/p>\n
But even when the calls weren\u2019t going their way, the Liberty didn\u2019t allow it to impact their focus, which is a sign of improvement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is frustrating because you mentioned the free-throw difference, it\u2019s just insane,\u201d Kennedy Burke said. \u201cBut we have to be more aggressive to attack the basket and make them make those calls. So at the end of the day, we have to control what we can control and that\u2019s our energy and attitude for 40 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Liberty trailed by as many as 15 points in the first half but trimmed the Lynx lead to five at halftime.<\/p>\n
New York Liberty forward Leonie Fiebich (13) controls the ball as Minnesota Lynx guard Courtney Williams (10) defends during the first quarter at Target Center. Matt Krohn-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
New York punched first out of the break, rattling off a 6-0 run to take its first lead of the game.<\/p>\n
But the Liberty\u2019s fatigue set in as the game wore on, and in the end, their late-game execution wasn\u2019t sharp.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was maybe a lapse of like two minutes there in the fourth,\u201d said Sabrina Ionescu, who had 13 points and 10 assists. \u201cWe\u2019re continuing to close the gap\u2026 We\u2019re continuing to grow and build and, I mean, it\u2019s tough to win a game with shooting eight free throws in this league, they\u2019re too good of a defensive team\u2026 There\u2019s so many factors that play into winning or losing games. And I\u2019d say we just controlled the things that we could and obviously didn\u2019t focus on the things outside of our control like the players that we don\u2019t have and the free throws that we didn\u2019t get.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Liberty (21-13) remained in third place after the loss. <\/p>\n
They have yet to beat the top-seeded Lynx (28-5) in each of their first three meetings this season.<\/p>\n
The final 2024 Finals rematch of this season is scheduled for Tuesday at Barclays Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to just continue to get better every single game and I think we\u2019ve done that,\u201d Ionescu said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long month on the road and for us to get back home in front of our crowd and we owe them from the last game that we played the Lynx at home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 People reference \u201cplayoff atmospheres\u201d during the regular season more than they probably should. But Saturday\u2019s 2024…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,10983,3801,6209,66,458],"class_list":{"0":"post-235665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-minnesota-lynx","10":"tag-new-york-liberty","11":"tag-sabrina-ionescu","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115043040366893658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}