– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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NEW YORK — A couple of days before defending a title, the New York Liberty went out on the court on Saturday afternoon and performed at a level very close to championship form. Breanna Stewart did it one further, performing at a level that, at least according to her stat line, no player in the history of the league has reached in any single game in the more than quarter century the WNBA has been in existence.
Stewart dazzled on both ends of the court, leading all scorers with 33 points, as New York dispatched of the Los Angeles Sparks for the second time in three days, 98-88, inside Barclays Center in a matinee affair. The shorthanded Liberty received 20 points from Kayla Thornton, who made six of her seven three-pointers on the day, as the Liberty have now won 10 of their last 11 games.
Along with her 33 points, Stewart added seven assists, six blocked shots and three steals, making her the first player in WNBA history to have a game with at least 20 points, five rebounds, five assists and three steals. Furthermore, she reached those landmarks at the end of three quarters.
Stewart started to cook soon after the Sparks had opened up a 31-23 lead early in the second quarter. From there, New York went on a 14-2 run — including an 8-0 that tied the game at 31 — to take over the lead for good, and Stewart scored eight straight points for the Liberty in the midst of that stretch. Her three-pointer at the 6:40 mark gave New York a 34-33 lead, and the Liberty never trailed from that point on.
Thornton, in the starting lineup due to the absences of Courtney Vandersloot and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, followed Stewart’s three with a long ball on her own, and she ended the day with a career-high six threes while coming up just one point shy of a new WNBA game high.
New York grew a 10-point lead at halftime into a 23-point bulge late in the third quarter, with the highlight of that stretch being a crowd-electrifying chase-down block by Stewart on Stephanie Talbot on a layup attempt right before the former crashed into the basketball stanchion.
Today’s game starts a challenging part of the schedule for New York, who will travel to Atlanta and play the Dream tomorrow afternoon before coming back to the New York City area to play the Commissioner’s Cup Final against the Minnesota Lynx on Tuesday evening. The game against Minnesota will be at UBS Arena, the home of the New York Islanders located next to Belmont Racetrack, as the Barclays Center is occupied by the NBA as it gets ready to host the 2024 NBA Draft next Wednesday.
Los Angeles, which has lost six straight and the last two against the Liberty, were led by Dearica Hamby’s 20 points, six rebounds and five assists. The Sparks were 22-for-26 from the free throw line, and took 17 more attempts from the charity stripe than New York, but shot just 42.6 percent from the field (29-for-68) and made just eight of their 27 three-point tries.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Saturday afternoon’s game, with photos taken by ALOST staff photographer Chris Simon. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page. Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are eight pictures in total.
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