The Washington Mystics poked the bear.
And the Liberty bit back.
After the Liberty lost their regular-season finale on a Washington buzzer-beater, Mystics guard Natasha Cloud waved goodbye to the disappointed Barclays Center crowd. It was disrespect that not only stuck with the Liberty, but provided fuel for their postseason fire.
And they used it to burn Washington in a 90-75 playoff-opening rout Friday.
“They waved us off our home court last game,” Sabrina Ionescu said in an on-court interview after the victory Friday at Barclays Center. “We gotta show them what that feels like.”
And after she eviscerated the Mystics with 20 of her game-high 29 points in the second half, Ionescu expanded and expounded on the disrespect.
“It’s all of us understanding what that felt like last game, losing on a buzzer [-beater] at our home court, and our understanding what we had to do adjustment-wise to not allow that to happen,” Ionescu said.
“And playoff basketball is different. It’s 0-0 for everyone, and we have to take care of business and not let these opportunities pass us by when we do have home-court advantage. So we understood the pressure that we put on ourselves to want to be the absolute best every single game, and none of us forgot what that felt like after last game, and we took that with a chip on our shoulder coming into this game.”
The Liberty took that chip and clubbed the Mystics with it.
After not being physical enough in the regular-season finale, they showed that the postseason is another matter altogether. From the second quarter on, the Liberty hunkered down to defend better, crash the glass and pull away for what became an easy win.
“We’ve been preparing for all week and really since Sunday,” said Breanna Stewart, who had an uncharacteristically quiet 10 points on 3-for-16 shooting, but added eight rebounds and had game highs of three blocks and a plus-18 rating.
“They played more physical than us in the last game, and we wanted to make sure that we came out and hit them first,” she added, “and made sure that it wasn’t a one-time thing, it was a constant thing throughout this entire game.”
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