SSN- New York Liberty

The Liberty season is over, so let’s talk about it (read if you want and no, I’m not bashing coaches or players) Against the Atlanta Dream, the swarming defense was just too much over time and NY was not solid enough as a team to get over that. They had the fight, the resolve but their own inconsistency lead to failure. That lead to the amount of turnovers, the unorganized stretches of offensive basketball and the miscommunications on defense. How is that possible? Well most of the year they had no idea what the rotations were because they had players in and out all season. They came in thinking that Satou would be a massive part of this team. Held out hope she could play and eventually found out that wasn’t possible. I mean shit, Sabrina Ionescu was dealing with a back issue that CLEARLY impacted her play for most of this season. They also had a first year head coach who… had to learn a lot. Not about basketball or about the WNBA or whatever. He needed to learn his team, he needed to learn his players. And that’s why I think Breanna Stewart nailed it. “We just needed more time”. DeMarco and this team needed more time with the full team to become a championship level team. DeMarco gets some warranted hate, but you also can’t seriously say that he was terrible given the circumstance. Towards the end of the season and that first round, the Liberty were getting it, they were finally starting to click. But they just needed more time to REALLY solidify what they were building. This isn’t an excuse, it’s fact. Now the Roster isn’t perfect. They needed more defense in their back court, they needed more consistency on their bench. It was a guessing game on who was going to either be an impact or be a no show. But the reason this one stings for me is that I DO think this roster was good enough to make the Finals. Now here’s what I like moving forward. I like the big 3 still. I do think Sab was hindered by her injuries. She’ll be back to being herself. Stewie is still an MVP candidate and JJ is a DOMINANT force inside. I liked what we saw, in totality from the Rookie Guards. Pauline needs to develop her defense and needs to better her 3 point shot but she showed promise and poise many times this year that won the Liberty games. Fauthoux literally went from a development player that got 0 minutes for most of this year to an INTEGRAL part of the Liberty postseason rotation. She fought on defense too and wasn’t a liability, you HAVE to be excited about her future. It’s crazy because if the ball bounces literally two different ways, the Liberty are up 2-1 in this series. Obviously that’s stupid Cope and not reality but that’s how razor thin this series was. I don’t know what’s next for the Liberty, but when we look back at this season can we PLEASE bring along the context of what they went through, what they still accomplished and how they still managed to be one of the 4 best teams in the WNBAwhen it’s all set and done. I could go on more and more, and I will. But I had to type this now. This sucks. A lot. #WNBA #SEAFOAMSZN