From her spot in the corner, the same one that Betnijah Laney-Hamilton turned into her signature shot — her go-to location where she could space away from the Liberty’s other stars — during last year’s run to the Finals, Laney-Hamilton had a window. A brief one, but enough to get something off. She could catch the pass from Sabrina Ionescu, collect herself for a moment and elevate.
There were plenty of moments during the season the Liberty needed Laney-Hamilton and didn’t have her available. A knee injury prompted a mid-season clean-up procedure around the Olympic break. She missed 12 regular-season games.
But with the Liberty’s 17-point lead in Game 2 on Sunday cut to two, and the danger of falling into a 2-0 deficit inching closer to becoming a reality, there was Laney-Hamilton, the defensive-anchor-turned-offensive-spark, back in the corner and watching her shot fall through the net as the Liberty’s lead extended to five. There was Laney-Hamilton, grabbing the defensive rebound on the next possession.
And the Lynx never got closer than that the rest of the way, with the Liberty escaping after a 80-66 win to even the series after the blueprint that worked throughout the season and helped them arrive at this juncture to begin with worked again. They held Lynx star Napheesa Collier, on pace to have the highest-scoring postseason in league history, to just 16 points. And a balanced offense — led by Breanna Stewart with 21 and Laney-Hamiltion with 20 — provided just enough of a cushion.
The optics with a second loss to Minnesota weren’t good. The Lynx were already the only team to defeat the Liberty multiple times during the regular season, and the Liberty were already tasked with overcoming any emotional hangover that stemmed from their collapse on Thursday, when Stewart missed a free throw to win at the end of regulation after the Liberty blew a double-digit lead.
So head coach Sandy Brondello was fine with the two days off in between games. Jonquel Jones was, too. The Liberty could reflect on what went wrong down the stretch, how leads they protected during the regular season evaporated. They could watch the film. And then they could move on — “we can’t stay in the past,” Brondello said pregame.
It didn’t take long for that to translate into Game 2. Ionescu scored 12 points in the first quarter, including the first five off a layup and then a 3-pointer in transition. The Liberty shot 72 percent from the field. They quickly went up by 10. They forced the Lynx into difficult shots. They led by as many as 17 points. They took a similar lead into halftime, as nearly everything from Game 1 — through at least the opening 20 minutes — had unfolded similarly.
Eventually, though, the Lynx made their run, even with Collier stuck on the bench late in the third quarter with four fouls. She returned in the fourth and made it a four-point game with just over six minutes left with a turnaround jumper. They eventually pulled within two.
Instead of another collapse, though, the Liberty kept their lead intact. They hit the shots that put games away — the ones that leave no chance at a last-minute or last-second collapse. Fiebich connected on one from around the 3-point arc. Jones added another in the final seconds. This time, the Liberty didn’t need two free throws at the end. They avoided the collapse, the 18 seconds, the 12-point lead, all of it.
And most of all, they avoided the 2-0 hole that derailed their franchise-best regular season and everything the superteam had built toward last year. They couldn’t recover from a convincing Game 1 from the Aces. On an afternoon when a Lynx win would’ve all but eliminated the Liberty’s margin of error, they ensured that — for at least two more days — some semblance of that still exists.
Their season still has some life.
