NEW YORK – Breanna Stewart and her New York Liberty teammates were confident they can rebound from the Game 1 collapse that put them down a game to Minnesota in the WNBA Finals.
Stewart said she watched the free throw she missed at the end of regulation which would have won the game for New York a few times to see if anything was off with her form. She came to the conclusion it wasn’t and that sometimes shots just don’t fall.
“I’m on to the next, you know, what happened happened, moving forward because this is a series and my team team needs me,” she said.
The two-time MVP and her teammates will need to be at their best on Sunday when they face the Lynx in Game 2 of the best-of-five series.
“We have to have short-term memory get it out of our system really quick and get ready for another battle,” Stewart said at practice Saturday. “We came in yesterday addressing things, today addressing things and just really, fine tuning and getting ready to go again. We’re all kind of yearning for another opportunity.”
Stewart said a bunch of people reached out to her after the 95-93 overtime loss Thursday including former teammate Sue Bird. They had a common thread in their messaging.
“Bounce back,” she said.
Guard Sabrina Ionescu, who struggled from the field against Minnesota, said that there is no panic in the team after the loss that saw New York blow a 15-point lead in the final five minutes.
“It’s a crappy way to lose, but I think understanding, like a lot of that stuff’s in our control to come out and be able to change it and, you know, not panicking,” she said. “I mean, it’s one game and understanding we got an opportunity tomorrow to come out and be better.”
Despite getting the win, the Lynx know that they can play a lot better Sunday before the series shifts to Minnesota for Game 3 on Wednesday.
“It’s one game, it’s a long series. We’re definitely not coming into this thinking we have this thing won,” said Minnesota forward Napheesa Collier. “We understand what happened in Game 1. We were able to steal that game, but it means nothing. It means they’re going to come out even hungrier in Game 2 and it’s going to be a battle just like it was the first night. And we definitely want to start out better and play better as a team throughout the game so that we’re not in that position.”
Collier and teammate Courtney Williams were huge down the stretch of regulation and in overtime for the Lynx. Williams knows the team has a lot to improve on.
“There were so many different things that we could have done better but I’m so happy we can get into the gym today and work on it,” said Williams, who hit a four-point play with 5.5 seconds left in regulation to give the Lynx their first lead of the game.
Game 1 drew a huge audience with an average of 1.14 million viewers tuning it. It was the most watched WNBA Finals opener ever and ranked as the most-watched Finals contest since Game 3 of the 2003 championship round between Los Angeles and Detroit.
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