The New York Liberty’s closing couple before the All-Star break had a flair for the dramatics and much-needed winning.
BROOKLYN—Taylor was swift, but Sabrina swished.
Sabrina Ionescu and the New York Liberty prevailed in a battle of the WNBA’s present and future, overcoming a historic performance from the arms of Sydney Taylor to earn a 95-94 victory over the Chicago Sky on Wednesday night at Barclays Center.
Nine from New York, namely the literal last minute tallies from Ionescu, changed the course of the game as the Liberty completed a 23-10 run over the final 4:50 of game time.
The Liberty trailed by as much as 12 in the game and faced and eight-point disadvantage entering the final minute. Ionescu’s sensational 60 seconds capped off what has to be one of the top individual and team efforts of Brooklyn’s season. It’s one that has some work to do if it is to continue atoning for last year’s disappointing follow-up to a 2024 championship, one that ended with a first-round exit at the hands of the Phoenix Mercury.
“We believed. I would say we weren’t really thinking about anything besides just trying to execute and stay present, be where our feet are at, not worry about anything that wasn’t going our way or was,” said Ionescu of the metropolitan mindset in the aftermath. “We stuck together through the highs, the lows. They had the run there late and obviously we could have just said, ‘All right, whatever, we’ll just pick it up after after the break, and and we’ll kind of hope we can turn on this switch that just makes us go in the right direction.”
“Instead, we kind of willed this win. Every single person who stepped out on the floor tonight understood the significance and importance of it, and we believed the entirety of the game. And there wasn’t a moment where I really thought we were going to lose.
The OT-yssey
Thus ends the Liberty’s rollercoaster journey to the end of the first half of the first tour led by Chris DeMarco, one that closes with its first pair of (official) consecutive victories since an eight-game winning streak ended in mid-June. New York (15-12) previously took a 99-98 overtime decision from the Dallas Wings on Monday, partly avenging two emphatic defeats at the hands of North Texas.
The Liberty also avoided creating what would have been their first five-game losing streak since 2022, the year before Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart arrived to help change the course of New York basketball forever.
“You always want to go into the All-Star break feeling good,” Ionescu noted. “I feel like these last two games are helping us get on the right track and have momentum at the right time. You obviously want to peak when it matters and we’re continuing to build chemistry, grind out wins, find ways to win, completely different ways. I feel like this is exactly what we needed going into the break.”
It turns out that Matt Damon had only the second-most arduous journey home in July. At least his “Odyssey” character and his doomed men had a ship for their journey, as the Liberty’s charter plane to Dallas broke down prior to the visit’s originally scheduled date of July 16.
Placing the plane on the injury report could’ve well been the coup de grace of a literally painful season: all five Liberty starters have had to miss at least one game due to injury this season, with Leonie Fiebich and Satou Sabally still out indefinitely.
Even with such ailments and more, struggling with such a Ionescu/Jonquel Jones/Breanna Stewart triumvirate will hardly garner any sympathy, a happening they were repeatedly reminded of when they fell to elite competition during a trying July. Following its Commissioner’s Cup victory over Las Vegas on June 30, New York faced league-leading Minnesota twice this month and split the pair while also dealing with losses to playoff observers Seattle and Toronto.
All that and more has created an All-Star landmark where the Liberty sits seventh on the active playoff bracket. The playoffs still seem like an assured happening but it’s still shocking to think a team like the Liberty would be the penultimate team let in while jostling for position with the young Washington Mystics in eighth.
If observers are shocked and annoyed by the results, it’s nothing to how the players feel.
“We don’t like where we’re at right now, but we are. We’re f***ing there,” Stewart said “We’re we’re in it. We’re in the trenches, and we can either keep sinking or we can we can dig ourselves out. That’s something, as an organization, we all have to do, This group, we continue to show up every day for sure, because we have vets, we have pros in here. These losses are not going to rattle us, but at the same time, we need to get better.”
GAME CHANGER
Sabrina Ionescu caught fire in the 4Q dropping 13 PTS on 4/5 shooting to help the @nyliberty get the comeback win against the Sky! Of those 13 PTS she dropped 9 in the final 56.1 seconds!#WNBASeason30 pic.twitter.com/9u4gFJp3zq
— WNBA (@WNBA) July 23, 2026
It Takes Two To Make A Thing Go Right
No one’s saying a chaotic couple before Jones and Stewart make their way to Chicago isn’t going to punch the Liberty’s ticket back to the WNBA Finals.
For example, the active Betnijah Laney-Hamilton quagmire remains a quandary after she was a healthy scratch for the fourth time in seven games. Being taken to the brink by the Paige Bueckers-less Wings and the bottom-dwelling Sky also won’t do much to fully assuage concerns, especially with post-halftime concerns still surfacing. Overtime in Dallas, for example, could’ve been avoided if they score more than nine points in the third quarter.
But the tumultuous two nonetheless produced something inspiring, something New York hopes it can hold in the break and beyond. Stewart, for her part, stated that she didn’t want to define the win over the Wings with the feeling of “relief,” reason that things weren’t over quite yet. She kept the same attitude after they stifled the Sky, though added just a bit of a treat before she took the orange carpet in Chicago with her wife Marta and children Ruby and Theo.
“I think [you can] add a little bit more happiness, maybe,” said Stewart, on her way to her eighth WNBA All-Star Game, said. “Whether it’s going to be winning at the end or going to overtime, or whatever the case may be, we want to just put together wins. This league is really competitive and really tough and we’re proud because both times we could have folded and we fought back. Now we have a little bit of an All-Star break for people to to kind of step away, enjoy themselves, enjoy All-Star, not be so busy, and then regroup and finish the second half of the season really strong.”
Nine From New York
The rise of clutch Ionescu has no doubt stood as one of the more consistently positive developments of the season. A preseason injury probably ended her case to appear in Chicago’s main event before it truly began but Ionescu is making up for lost time, literally and figuratively.
In her own words, the fateful flinger was not officially invited to the 3-Point Contest. Though thus unable to add a third showcase title to her crammed trophy case, she provided her own showcase on Monday and Wednesday in efforts that helped light the Liberty’s torch toward victory.
In Dallas, she scored a dozen extra period points on a perfect output from the field, both settling into WNBA records. It rendered a dreary 3-of-20 performance in regulation long forgotten, one that’s now but a footnote in a potential season-changeer.
Her one-woman show enjoyed a grand stage against Chicago, one where she led the Liberty back from another late double-figure deficit to push the metropolitan narrative forward.
After Jones got the last Liberty run started with a three-pointer that got the lead down to a single figure, Ionescu would score all but five of the Liberty’s last 18 before the break came calling. A crucial four-point play, earned when she was fouled by former metropolitan collaborator Natasha Cloud rendered Brooklyn hysterical.
The air deflated with Taylor’s version, capping off her second triple-decade game with free throws obtained after she was re-inserted following Ionescu’s quartet. The eight-point lead Chicago generated for the final minute, which saw doubles from Cloud and fellow ex-New Yorker Courtney Vandersloot restore the advantage, seemed fairly ironclad, especially in the eyes of Liberty fans that flocked for the exits to beat traffic.
Those that stayed were rewarded not with Shake Shack burgers—Chicago, for all its late meandering, did not miss the necessary couple of free throws necessary for such a coupon—but with Ionescu’s latest clutch sequel.
Ionescu erased the lead with a personal 9-1 run where the lone counter was a Vandersloot free throw. A trio of triples made up the stretch in both conventional and more arduous ways. The point guard showed the 3-Point Contest’s selection committee exactly what it was missing with two quick drains from deep (the first coming less than three seconds after the Liberty called a reset timeout) and getting the last three the hard way with a successful and-one on an Azura Stevens charge.
Sabrina Ionescu in first 4 quarters:
9 PTS
3-20 FG
1-9 3PT
2-2 FTIonescu in overtime:
12 PTS
5-5 FG
1-1 3PT
1-1 FTLiberty snap the Wings’ 6-game win streak.pic.twitter.com/ZoxTuAZXVG
— Underdog WNBA (@UnderdogWNBA) July 21, 2026
Save The Best For Last
Such a show generated reactions that Jones, who sank the go-ahead free throw that created the final margin, labeled “comparable” to the jubilation heard during the victorious stages of the 2024 WNBA Finals that produced the Liberty’s postseason championship.
“I felt like the roof was going lift off of the building, honestly,” Jones said of the Brooklyn bedlam. “It felt really good to have that, especially with us being on the road and obviously [dealing with] the losing streak and all that stuff. To come home and have them just really backing us and to feel that energy, it was second to none.”
Ionescu made her own brand of history on Wednesday night to complete her countering of Taylor: one of the final threes allowed her to move past Vickie Johnson as the second-leading scorer in Liberty history. Though just under 500 away, only local legend Tina Charles remains.
Bad Times, Good Times
Adaptation and response have defined the Liberty good times this year: it’s when they haven’t held either that things get ugly, those problems probably summitting when they dropped a 108-88 output to the Indiana Fever over the weekend.
The difference, New York has noted, has been the way they curb opposing enthusiasm.
In each part of the quadrilogy of defeat, the Liberty trailed by at least 15 at some point. Things got particularly egregious in the trip to Indianapolis, a showing that featured a 38-point swing before the double-decade margin settled in.
That improved in the most recent two, as New York had a response for everything that both Dallas and Chicago had to throw at them. Even with the runs that the Wings and Sky embarked upon, the lead never expanded beyond 12 this time and never for any extended periods.
Part of that could stem from the addition of Rebecca Allen into the opening and closing combinations: well-regarded for her New York longevity and defensive tenacity, Allen’s name also had “DNP-CD” next to it a little too often in the early going, getting lost in the metropolitan depth.
Part of the Liberty’s 13th different starting five combination, Allen has New York’s best offensive rating in the last two games, the latter of which featured a 12-point showing that helped keep New York afloat when Taylor put up some sterling debut tracks in the first half. Her rating of 123.3 is ninth among all starting WNBA women putting up at least 30 minutes a game in the span.
“She just continues to be a vet,” Stewart said of Allen, the long leftover from the Liberty’s Madison Square Garden days. “She’s someone that’s obviously played in this league for a number of years. But her length, her defensive presence [is huge. “Today, I was happy for her to see the ball go through the basket more than it did in in Dallas. She’s aggressive and I’m just happy for her and finally getting her shot and really making her impact.”
Allen is one of several New York depth stars that could be further relied upon on the road ahead: following in the footsteps of fellow Bleu breakout Pauline Astier, New York further enjoyed a early boom from developmental contract holder Marine Fauthoux. Another Rookie In Name Only, Fauthoux put up a serendipitous 10-point-and-rebound double-double in the dub over Dallas, the first Liberty freshman to pull off the feat within her first five games with the team.
Even when they endured what has become a far-too-traditional third quarter swoon against the Wings, the Liberty was at least somewhat at peace with the way struggled: instead of losing turnovers (particularly those of the live ball variety), New York took a bit of bittersweet pride that the deficit was generated by missing good looks rather than dealing with unforced errors. With shooters like its big three and more in tow, the Liberty would rather fix that issue than dive into the world of unforced errors.
“You don’t want to think about basketball for a couple of days,” Ionescu said with a smirk on Wednesday when talking about her mindset on a rare, true All-Star break. “I think it’s important for everyone to get away a little bit. Obviously, it’s a longer season with more games … I feel like these few days will be a really good time to reset, recharge, get everyone healthy, feeling good mentally, physically, and go into the second half of the season strong.”
The Liberty’s first chance to build on the potential establishment lands on Tuesday when they open a three-game road trip in Los Angeles (10 p.m. ET, WWOR).
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
[editor-note]
The post The OT-yssey: Liberty Ends 1st Half On High Note appeared first on Ballislife.com.