After the Aces secured their second consecutive WNBA championship with their 70-69 victory on Wednesday night in Game 4 of the Finals, Las Vegas star Kelsey Plum took a shot at the Liberty’s performance and team dynamic.
“I think we knew we hadn’t played our best basketball,” Plum said. “We also knew that, as much as they’re a team, they’re not a team, if that makes sense. They’re really good individual players, but they don’t care about each other. And you can tell in those moments. They revert back to individual basketball.”
Both Jonquel Jones and Sabrina Ionescu responded to the comment in their exit interviews on Friday morning at Barclays Center.
“That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Ionescu said. “I believe that I’ve never been on a team that’s been more committed to one another than what has been like this year. We had players from all over come together in such a short amount of time and commit to one another — commit to role changes — to try to win. And for a team as new as we were with so many different role changes to come in and be in the Finals is unheard of.”
Jones said Plum’s comment was “classless.”
“She’s not in our locker room. She doesn’t know what goes on in our locker room. … I think it’s easy to kick people when they’re down and you’re up,” Jones said. “And, honestly and truly, to me, it felt kind of classless. You won a championship. You get to celebrate. You get to talk about things that your team did to be successful. But you choose to, essentially, s–t on somebody else.”
Plum posted, on X, an apology after Jones’ response made the rounds on social media, claiming her comment was taken out of context.
“Since the media wants to do click bait, imma cut this drama out right now so we can move on and be in peace,” she wrote. “What I said was taken extremely out of context. I was trying to articulate my teammates and I have been through a lot and we used our bond to get over the hump.
“And getting through it doesn’t happen over night. Never been the type to throw shade, quite the opposite actually. I see how it came off, never was my intention and I apologize. Our game grew immensely from this series, don’t let this bull s–t detract from the biggest win here.”
On Friday, Ionescu admitted the hip injury she suffered in Game 4 of the semifinals against the Connecticut Sun affected her throughout the WNBA Finals.
While repeating that there is no excuse for her and the Liberty’s performance in the series, which they lost 3-1 to the Aces, Ionescu said she received an injection ahead of both Game 1 and 2 in Las Vegas “just to be able to play.”
“I had to get an injection just to be able to play in the first two Vegas games. Obviously, not ideal, but it happens,” she said.
Ionescu later apologized to the media on her way out of the press conference for being unavailable for postgame scrums following the Game 4 loss on Wednesday night.
Her explanation was that she wasn’t feeling well.
The guard threw up in a trash can midway through the fourth quarter of the game during a timeout on the sideline after making a crucial 3-point shot for the Liberty.
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