The Liberty can always rely on the Big Three

MINNEAPOLIS – The game still lasted a second, so I spent the time remembering which athlete I'd recently heard said he loved nothing more than silencing a crowd. I knew it was a woman; I was pretty sure it was a basketball player. For the second time in a week, I recognized the appeal of this feeling and wanted to acknowledge the mysterious woman. She had identified this powerful, almost violent energy transfer. It must feel amazing to be in the middle of it all and know that you caused the whole thing.

In an improbably tied game, Sabrina Ionescu had just dove to the left ear of the Minnesota Lynx logo and hit a 28-foot three-pointer to put the New York Liberty ahead 80-77. A timeout and a second later the buzzer sounded. Dazed fans made their way. “I’m just disappointed,” a security guard in the tunnel muttered, typically Minnesota. And then it occurred to me: the quote was on 60 minutes a few weeks ago from Lynx star Napheesa Collier. “It’s almost more fun,” she told Jon Wertheim. “When you’re in a crowded arena with the other team. And you hit something like a big three or a big block or something. And you can hear them all saying, ‘Oh.’ I love that feeling.”

At the Collier Building on Wednesday night, the largest crowd in Lynx history chanted “Oh.” Among the 19,521, there must have been a Minnesota Hoops superfan who had seen Alana Beard emerge from the corner in a building, Nneka Ogwumike disappearing , Luka Doncic on Rudy Gobert and now this. How could they still be a functioning human being? Why did they keep going to basketball games? The sorrow in the air seemed too much for anyone to bear even once.

In Game 3, the Liberty alleviated all the pain from Game 1 by demanding everything from their opponents and taking a 2-1 lead in this best-of-five series. Dissatisfied with having to make big comebacks in New York, the Lynx responded with a furious start of their own, leading by as many as 15 places. Minnesota was in for a hot shootout in this finale, and Kayla McBride and Bridget Carleton combined for 17. Minnesota's 28 points in the first quarter suggested early on that this could be it. With Breanna Stewart picking up two early fouls and the Liberty trailing by 14 points, head coach Sandy Brondello substituted substitute Nyara Sabally, whose few but crucial minutes protecting the basket and driving to the basket kept the game within reach.

In retrospect, the fact that New York was still there was an unfavorable sign for Minnesota. The Liberty can solve every problem, no matter how small, with their three superstars: Stewart, Ionescu and Jonquel Jones. “Sab, JJ and I know when it’s time to make something happen,” Stewart said after the game. She chose the third and fourth quarters as her own. After her team trailed by six points in the final minute of the third, Stewart hit all sorts of awkward fadeaways, pull-up threes and free throws to personally score the Liberty's next 13 points and tie the game with six minutes left. She would finish her night with 30 points, including a perfect 10-for-10 finish at goal. Even though her shot kept coming in the last two postseasons, Stewart followed up one clinical defensive performance with another. “We’re not going to fucking lose this game.” she told her team in a huddle in the fourth quarter, even though it was virtually unnecessary given the way they played. She was having the night, which I could feel as she left the court after warmups, walked past a group of excited young Lynx fans hoping for high-fives, and strode past them Bill Belichick-style.

Minnesota largely neutralized New York's rebounding advantage, a feature of the first two games, and still came up short. Shortly after I looked at the monitor to confirm that the teams were dead even on the glass in the second quarter, Jones erased a reverse layup attempt by Courtney Williams as if reminding her that she still existed. The Lynx sent extra bodies into the game, denying Jones the second chance she enjoyed in Game 1. Alanna Smith was particularly excellent on the glass, a mark of 20 in a three-point game, but foul trouble and a back injury she suffered while jostling with Jones in the second quarter made her less effective.

Jones, who only had five rebounds, said after the game that she was disappointed with her night on the glass. But when Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve made a game-changing play, it wasn't Ionescu's threes or anything from Stewart. Instead, she came up with a three-pointer made by Jones to cut Minnesota's lead from four to one in the final three minutes of the game.

Jones also scored the next basket, a layup that gave New York the lead for the first time since the score was 5-4. Then it was Ionescu's turn. Stewart recovered a bunny that McBride missed, and Ionescu made the Lynx pay with a three-pointer over Collier, only her second three-pointer of the night. After Minnesota tied it again, with Carleton fearlessly passing Stewart for an easy layup and a calm-as-usual Collier hitting two free throws with 16 seconds left, there was a third.

The shooter admitted afterwards that she barely remembered it. Only after watching it again in the locker room did she see how deep the three-pointer was and which hand she had dribbled with before taking it. There was nothing special about it beyond the operation, emphasized Ionescu. “It's a shot I take often, in training and before games. It's not like, “Hail Mary, I hope this gets in.” Once I got it out, I was like, Yes, that's in there.”

McBride, Ionescu's defender, seemed a little put out by the question about the final play of the game, and who could blame her? Not only was her stellar evening of filming now an afterthought, but she had essentially done an admirable job with Ionescu. Ionescu had just seven points in three quarters. Unlike Game 2, when she traded shot-chasing for playmaking in the second half, she didn't even collect assists. The arduous, consistent kind of stardom is easy to digest, rather than the kind that hits you like a vice. “A great player made a good shot,” McBride said. Sometimes it's just so simple and all you can do is say, “Oh.”