LAS VEGAS (AP) — The celebration was relatively muted given how long the Liberty had waited to exact revenge on the Aces for beating New York on its home court in last year's WNBA Finals.
Except Sunday's 76-62 victory wasn't exactly the moment the Liberty have dreamed about.
They are three victories from making that vision a reality and will have home-court advantage in the best-of-five series against the Connecticut Sun or Minnesota Lynx. The finals series begins Thursday.
“We went to the finals last year,” Breanna Stewart said. “We didn't do nothing.”
The Liberty have spent nearly a year using that finals loss to a short-handed Las Vegas team playing with a sharp focus in establishing the league's best record. Coming up two wins short of a championship won't be good enough this year.
So as satisfying as it was to beat the Aces, it's not the title.
The Liberty not only have last year's close call hanging in the shadows, but there also is the organization's oh-so-close history. New York went to the finals in three of the league's first four years and lost each time to the Houston Comets. Then the Liberty lost two years later to the Los Angeles Sparks.
Maybe this is the year they get it done.
One major advantage in wrapping up the series against Las Vegas in four games was it gives New York extra time to rest while the Sun and Lynx play a winner-takes-all Game 5 on Tuesday. Then the winner will have to travel from Minneapolis.
“This playoff schedule is extremely condensed,” Stewart said. “If you go to Game 5, you have one day to prepare for Game 1 of the finals. That's insane.”
Insane also might be an apt description of Brooklyn's Barclays Center, which is drawing large, energetic crowds sprinkled with celebrities, including noted courtside spectator Spike Lee.
Now that the Liberty are back in the finals, expect the buzz to grow even louder.
“I hope it's sold out,” Stewart said. “I hope it's 18,000. Home-court advantage is a real thing, especially when you get to this point because it's so loud that you can't hear. Especially for us in Game 3, it was so loud here (in Las Vegas) we could not hear, and that's toughness of going on the road.”
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