The Guru’s WNBA Report: New York Stops Minnesota’s Second Straight Attempted Comeback to Knot the Championship Best-of-Five Series 1-1.

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

This particularly WNBA best-of-five championship finals is starting to resemble the production of a movie.

From the side of the New York Liberty, seeking their first ever title in a 28-season franchise search whose length matches the entire history of the league, Thursday’s Game 1 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn was a “Paradise Lost” adventure.

In the series opener, roaring to an overall 18-point lead in the first half and still up 15 with five minutes left in regulation, the New Yorkers succumbed to a series of twists and turns as the four-time past champion Minnesota Lynx rallied in overtime to flip the home court advantage while setting up Game Two on ABC on Sunday afternoon to be more adventurous.

And so it was that in front of another sellout that this round became “Paradise Rescued,” the Liberty about to go under again when another ferocious rally in the fourth quarter moved the Lynx within a basket at 66-64 with 5:36 left in regulation and the visitors going for the tie.

That’s when Brenna Stewart, who atoned a missed foul shot that would have won it in regulation on Thursday and missed a shot that would have kept things going in overtime, this time said “enough,” executing a pair of steals that set New York on a 14-2 finishing explosion for an 80-66 victory to knot things 1-1 as the action now moves to Minneapolis for the next two nights on ESPN at 8 p.m. in the Target Center.

For the Lynx, having stolen Game One, the next contest gives them a chance sweep the next two this week and claim an unprecedented fifth title and first since 2017, the last moment when Minnesota when got this far, which was the sixth time in seven years. None of the 20 teams who began 0-2 ever rallied to win the title.

For New York, the next one on Wednesday provides an opportunity to gain the upper hand and complete the quest.

For the neutral basketball fan, a split in the Midwest sets up a thrilling and decisive Game 5 back in Brooklyn next Sunday night at 8 p.m. on ESPN as the league throughout the playoffs has held its own in the eyeballs department fielding TV games against the NFL, a staging that was a declared a no-no in the early WNBA era.

In this one the Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu returned to her true form to power the home team to a 31-21 lead after the first quarter, scoring 12 of her 15 points, perhaps juiced by seeing from afar Oregon, her alma mater, edge Ohio State by a point in football in a 2-3 game that moved the Ducks into second place behind Texas in the weekly collegiate rankings.

Ionescu was 5-for-7 with three-pointers in the opening barrage, while Stewart set a championship round record with seven steals to add icing to a game-best 21 points and eight rebounds.

And while Jonquel Jones, who had 14 points and nine rebounds Sunday, was a bigger third force Thursday for the Liberty, though the effort went to waste, that role Sunday went to Philadelphia native and former Rutgers standout Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, whose shot from deep set off a 12-0 finish as part of a 20-point effort on the day playing before her mom Yolanda Laney, an all-American in her own right at Cheyney, and their Hall of Fame collegiate coach in both places in C. Vivian Stringer.

Laney-Hamilton didn’t play a large chunk of the regulation season having injured her knee before the league’s shut down for the Olympic break.

“I think what she brings is this grit, this toughness,” New York coach Sandy Brondello said of Laney-Hamilton. “All of us know she’s giving us whatever she’s got. And the way that she continued to be aggressive, they were going under on her and she knocked that thing down with confidence.

“She’s just impactful because she plays at both ends of the floor, and plays hard, and she’s a winner,” Brondello added. “So, happy that she got the success tonight and  keep building on it.”

The second straight sellout crowd, this one 18,040, was the largest Liberty attendance since their time in Brooklyn after moving from nearby Manhattan and Madison Square Garden.

Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier was clipped from her playoffs-long scoring explosions, collecting 16 points, while Courtney Williams, the heroine in Thursday’s comeback, scored 15 for the Lynx.

The crowd of notables included UConn coach Geno Auriemma, who counts Stewart and Collier among his former stars, they even teamed on an NCAA title squad in 2016.

Stewart, formerly with the Seattle Storm on two title teams prior to last season and who took a bunch of umbrage from Auriemma during the regular season portion of her freshman year before going on to win four straight MVP NCAA tourney titles in a consecutive fashion, gave a little of it back to her collegiate coach after the game.

Auriemma, who enters his 40th season next month, is four wins from passing recently retired Stanford coach and Hall of Famer Tara VanDerveer as the all-time Division I leader male or female.

Stewart also played on the Olympic gold medal team, the second of two which Auriemma coached in 2016.

“I kind of texted him,” Stewart said. “And I was like, you know what, it’s about time that you come to my game. I’ve been here for two years, and he hasn’t come down. What are you doing? Yeah, CD (associate head coach and Rutgers alum Chris Dailey who has been under Auriemma his whole time in Storrs), came, and she got the same message, too.”

 Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve, the La Salle grad and native of South Jersey, who’s tied with Van Chancellor with the former Houston Comets, for the most titles, was also the Olympic mentor setting the eighth-straight record Gold Medal accomplishment last August in Paris.

Reeve spoke of where things fell apart opposite the success the Lynx achieved in the finals opener.

“Our offense was bad at a time when we really needed it,” Reeve said. “Our pace was slow, taking too long to get into things, and I didn’t we were terribly hard to play against.

“I’m more disappointed we let it get to 17, I’m more disappointed in that. I’m more than disappointed, I’m pissed that it happened again.”

Reeve will be inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame, part of the Class of 2024, on Nov. 7.

“It felt like we had no sense of urgency,” Williams said of the loss. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to come out ready to play, man. We can’t keep putting ourselves in a hole.”

Collier was already looking to return back in front of the Lynx home crowd.

“Obviously, you want to steal one on the road,” she said. “We’re really disappointed I think how we played today, but excited to go home and play in front of our home crowd, and we have to respond.

“We have to come out playing better than we did in these two games. It’s hard,” Collier continued.

“Like we are both competing for a championship. You have to play with a level of desperation from the very beginning, and so that’s what we’re going to need to do to come out in Game 3.”

While Minnesota was challenging New York, a few miles to the north, retired Lynx star Seimone Augustus out of LSU was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., with Hall of Famer and former Minnesota star Lindsay Whalen being her presenter.