The Liberty have been singularly focused in ticking off one goal after another all season, setting them up for the ultimate success and some franchise history over the next several days.
The best overall record in the regular season and the coveted home-court advantage throughout the playoffs that comes with it? Check.
Getting past their 2023 scars and exacting some revenge on the team that denied them the league title one year ago? Done.
After knocking out the two-time champion Las Vegas Aces, the dangerous Minnesota Lynx stand in the way in the Liberty’s second straight trip to the WNBA Finals, with the opener of the best-of-five series promising to rock Atlantic Avenue on Thursday night at Barclays Center.
“I think that really what we talk about is the feeling that we felt last year,” said All-Star forward Breanna Stewart, a two-time WNBA champion earlier in her career with the Seattle Storm. “But we’re better than we were last year. We learned from it and we’ve done all the things we wanted to this season, and now we’re back in the Finals.
“We all came together to do something special and now is our moment to be here and to change it from what happened before.”
This marks the sixth trip to the Finals for the Liberty since the WNBA’s formation in 1997, and they are the only original franchise without a championship.
They moved to Brooklyn from Madison Square Garden in 2020.
“We know. We know we have the opportunity to do something that’s never been done before, and to be a first,” Stewart said. “When you’re a first, there’s not another first.
“We’re playing for each other, but we’re playing for this franchise and we’re playing for those that have been here before us and haven’t gotten over that hurdle.”
The final hurdle will be the Lynx, the No.2 overall seed after finishing 30-10 in the regular season before knocking out Phoenix and Connecticut in the first two postseason rounds.
Minnesota is fronted by MVP runner-up Napheesa Collier, Stewarts’ former teammate at UConn.
The 6-foot-1 forward has increased her scoring average from 20.4 points per game in the regular season to 27.1 with 9.7 rebounds per game over seven postseason appearances.
The Liberty dropped two of three games against the Lynx during the regular season, including a Minnesota win in Brooklyn in September.
But All-Star guard Sabrina Ionescu and coach Sandy Brondello both said the Lynx “haven’t seen us at our best,” notably a late-season lineup switch replacing Courtney Vandersloot in the starting five with impactful rookie Leonie Fiebich.
“Our season hasn’t been the easiest in terms of continuity, and now I feel like we’ve peaked at the right time,” Ionescu said. “I feel like we’re at a really good place right now.”
That place is back in the Finals, with potentially three games on their home court, with a chance for glory and a chance to make franchise history.
“We have that scar and that hurt and that memory [of last year], but it’s an entirely different situation, different team, and we’re gonna be ready for it,” Stewart said. “This one feels different because I feel like we’ve grown. We’re ready.
“I feel like last year everything happened really fast with the team, and it was kind of like ‘ready or not here we come.’ Now, we’ve gone through it, we have that mindset, that chemistry. And to me, honestly, the biggest thing is having that home-court advantage. That’s what you want. You want it for this reason, for the Finals.”
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