New York beat Minnesota in OT to win first WNBA championship
The New York Liberty beat the Minnesota Lynx 67-62 in overtime of a winner-take-all Game Five showdown in Brooklyn to secure their first WNBA title on Sunday, a year after falling short in the championship round for a fifth time.
New York got a team-high 17 points from Jonquel Jones, who was named Most Valuable Player of the WNBA Finals, and the top-seeded Liberty overcame a sluggish start to deny the Lynx a record fifth title.
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“This is something special right here and I’m trying not to cry,” said Breanna Stewart, who along with Sabrina Ionescu also won a gold medal with Team USA at the Paris Olympics.
“We had some ups and downs, this series was tough but we fought through because we wanted to bring it home to this city and this crowd.”
Timely shot-blocking and a clutch three-pointer by Ionescu, her team’s first of the game, allowed New York to grab a four-point lead late in the fourth quarter but neither team were able to pull away.
Stewart missed a chance to tie the game with 38 seconds left in regulation when she missed a pair of free throws but redeemed herself on her next trip to the line to force the extra period.
New York won the jump ball to start overtime and quickly went ahead with a Leonie Fiebich three-pointer that proved to be the game-winning basket before Nyara Sabally gave them their biggest lead of the game.
Stewart then sealed the title when she made two free throws with 10 seconds left in overtime.
The Liberty, who squandered a chance to secure the title in Minnesota on Friday, were sluggish to start Game Five. They missed their first 16 three-point attempts and never led until late in the third quarter.
Minnesota, powered by Napheesa Collier, led 19-10 after a first quarter during which Stewart and Ionescu, the Liberty’s two leading scorers this year, failed to register a point.
The Lynx used solid defense to keep Stewart and Ionescu from finding any rhythm but the Liberty, who missed all nine of their three-point attempts in the half, used a late surge to cut into a 12-point deficit and trailed by seven at the break.
New York came out more energized to start the third quarter and grabbed their first lead of the game late in the period when Ionescu threaded a brilliant pass to Sabally for a lay-up that put the hosts ahead 40-38 and woke up the home crowd.
“I could never dream of this,” Jones, who averaged 17.8 points in the Finals, said after being named MVP.
“It’s biggest moment and you have to lock in if you want to be a champion and it was all about this and us winning together because we really love each other.”
The series, in which three games were decided by three points or less, capped a season in which the WNBA was bolstered by the arrival of Indiana Fever rookie standout Caitlin Clark and saw its popularity reach new heights.
