Brooklyn ready to roar for Liberty
Barclays Center to host WNBA Finals Game 1 Thursday
Breanna Stewart and the New York Liberty waited nearly a calendar year for just this moment.
They hope the rest of Brooklyn is just as excited.
“I hope it’s sold out,” Stewart exclaimed Sunday, moments after the top-seeded Liberty earned their second straight trip to the WNBA Finals with a 76-62 Game 4 win in Las Vegas.
The 10,374 fans that showed up at Michelob ULTRA Arena to root on the the reigning two-time champion Aces watched helplessly as New York led from the early stages of the first quarter to the finish.
Stewart, who endured a four-game series loss to Vegas in last year’s championship round, with the finale coming here at Downtown’s Barclays Center on Oct. 18, tried to inspire Brooklynites to show up in greater numbers and even fuller throat than they have thus far in the playoffs.
Not that an average crowd of 12,863 through the Liberty’s first four home playoff games is any embarrassment. But Stewart knows those numbers will rise Thursday, when New York hosts Minnesota in Game 1 of the best-of-five WNBA Finals.
“I hope it’s 18,000. I think that’s about what Barclays gets,” she noted. “And home-court advantage is a real thing, and especially when you get to this point, because it’s so loud that you can’t hear.”
Celebrity row should be crowded as well.
Brooklyn film director Spike Lee, Grammy-winning recording artist Alicia Keys and former Knicks great Carmelo Anthony have all taken part in this ongoing run to grab the Liberty’s first-ever WNBA title.
But the most noise usually comes cascading down from the upper bowl, which would have to be open and near capacity for Barclays to be truly packed for Game 1.
Last Oct. 15, when New York hosted Vegas for Game 3 of the Finals after dropping the first two in Sin City, a record crowd of 17,143 celebrated as the Liberty got back in the series with a season-saving 87-73 triumph.
That feeling didn’t last as Stewart shot 3-for-17 in Game 4 and the Aces ran out of Brooklyn with a 70-69 victory and their second straight crown.
Now that Vegas is out of the way and the Liberty own home court, Stewart recalled playing on the Barclays hardwood in front of the biggest crowd it had ever hosted for a women’s basketball game.
“In Game 3, it was so loud here that we could not hear,” she admitted. “And that’s the toughness of going on the road.”
The Liberty won’t have to leave Brooklyn until Oct. 16, when the Lynx, fresh off vanquishing Connecticut in Game 5 Tuesday, will host Game 3 at the Target Center in Minnesota.
Game 2 will also be at Barclays on Sunday afternoon.
While the Liberty got to rest, the Lynx fought tooth and nail for their first Finals appearance in seven years.
“You guys know this playoff schedule is extremely condensed,” said Stewart, who won two championships and two Finals MVPs as a member of the Seattle Storm before signing here in 2023.
“If you go to a Game 5, you have one day to prepare for Game 1 of the Finals. That’s insane,” she added.
Minnesota, which won four championships in seven years from 2011 to 2017, isn’t the least bit worried about fatigue as Game 1 approaches.
“Talk about the schedule, who cares. Nobody’s going to feel bad for us,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. “Got to go hooping right away and we’ll do that.”
New York is just as eager to put the first championship trophy in its case, along with a parade down Flatbush Avenue later this month.
“As someone who’s kind of been part of this like new generation, I wasn’t able to watch the Minnesota Lynx and all those teams when they were on their run when when I was younger,” All-Star guard Sabrina Ionescu ceded.
Ionescu has taken a good look at this year’s version of the Lynx, who beat the Liberty in three of four meetings, including a 94-89 triumph here in Brooklyn on June 25 for the Commissioner’s Cup championship.
There were barely over 7,000 fans at Barclays that night as Napheesa Collier and Bridget Carleton combined for 45 points to deny New York its second straight in-season tournament title.
Collier, who had 27 points and 11 rebounds in Tuesday’s series-clinching win over the Sun, is not buying into the past being anything more than prologue.
“I think the regular season doesn’t mean anything, they are an amazing team,” the league’s Defensive Player of the Year said of the Liberty. “It’s going to be a great series, great basketball. Two teams with great players competing.”
Tip-off for Game 1 is at 8 p.m. ET.
GIVE ME LIBERTY: Both Stewart and Ionescu won gold medals in Paris last summer with Reeve as their coach. In 15 years with Minnesota, Reeve has won four championships and led the Lynx to two other WNBA Finals appearances. … The Liberty will be competing in their sixth WNBA Finals, having lost in 1997, 1999 and 2000 to Houston and 2002 to Los Angeles before falling to Vegas last season. … Game 1 will be televised by ESPN and Game 2 will be on ABC at 3 p.m. ET.
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