June 10th, 2018: Indiana at New York

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Marissa Coleman's three with sixteen seconds left turned out to be the game-winner in a close 78-75 Liberty win over the Indiana Fever. Sugar Rodgers led five Liberty players in double figures with 16 points off the bench. Kelsey Mitchell had 19 points to lead Indiana.

For putting on the cape, missed shots, bringing the noise, hitting people in the face, gratuitous hockey references (hit somebody!), riding with the usual suspects, and the permanency of impending doom, join your intrepid and ever so slightly fearful blogger after the jump.


It's back in the saddle again for your intrepid blogger, as the New York Liberty take on the Indiana Fever in the wilds of Westchester.

Communication skills. My franchise needs them. Don't promote that the gates open at 1 if you mean "the gates open at 1 only if you're going to the panel we didn't actually tell anyone about until the last minute" and the gates actually open at the standard 2.

This time we went up on the season subscriber bus, which was half full (and yet apparently someone had been told there was no room on the bus for her, all right then). It got a little bit awkward. Pro tip to the MSG flack: trying to drum up excitement about Isiah Thomas or White Plains on a bus full of inconvenienced Liberty fans will extremely not go over well. If we were fans of either of these concepts we'd probably not be on this bus. It might be a good idea for someone to prep trivia questions and discussion topics for Kym Hampton if she's going to host every ride, too. She didn't seem to have enough material to last the entire way.

The 2018 Liberty Pride shirt has a nifty design, but not the highest-quality material. Still, we bought it, because that's what we do. We're allies, and I'm technically gay spawn. As one might expect, there are lots of rainbows about here on Pride Day.

I'm starting to get annoyed at the dicey wi-fi quality here. Y'all, can this place have maybe one redeeming quality? Just one? If we have to live here this season? Can the wi-fi not be impossible to connect to, on top of the lighting being dim, the security lines being insufficient in quantity and slow in speed, the sight lines being obscured, the pitch of the seats being dangerously low, the food options significantly reduced, the available soda being Pepsi, and the travel time an absolute nightmare? Please? Pretty please?

(Honestly. Coming to this place the day after going to the multi-time Arena of the Year at Mohegan Sun is positively depressing. I've compared WCC to Walsh Gymnasium, but Walsh is a) set up for basketball, b) has much nicer bathrooms.)

Pretty solid choral anthem.

At halftime, we're up 38-36. Given that Tina is something like 2-for-googol from the field, I'll take it. The refs are letting a lot of contact go. But the three rapid miscues with the clock in the final minute of the second quarter are on whoever's operating the clock today, and the refs actually did a pretty good job of handling both the inability to start the clock and the inability to stop it. The reviews were quick.

I think there are at least two people in this building who would rather be at the Puerto Rican Day parade on Fifth Avenue.

The sad part is that we're getting good, at least somewhat organic, crowd noise. But we can't throw it in the ocean.

Katie May, whoever told you horizontal stripes and capri pants looked good on you lied to you and does not love you. I don't mean to get all Victorian on you, but cover your ankles.

You know, just once I'd like to have a no-doubt win. I'd like to not be in a dogfight. I didn't realize I was asking too much, but apparently I am. The only saving grace, I suppose, is that we played one of our worst games of the year and still managed to eke out a win. But I don't know how much more of this my heart can take.

Hind Ben Abdelkader came in briefly in the second quarter, and the PA guy stumbled so badly over her name that I thought he was just going to give up. She wasn't out there long. Kayla Alexander also got her only run in the first half. She was physical on the boards.

I was surprised to see Jazmon Gwathmey getting so much time, but she provides an outside option that Alexander really doesn't give Indiana. She hustled hard on the offensive glass and hit contested shots. I think she and I have different opinions as to how far her range extends, however. Victoria Vivians brought extra offensive punch and size off the bench for the Fever; she came up big in the fourth quarter, including a nice steal off a telegraphed pass, and the game-tying three that gave me flashbacks to the Stricklen shot. She's still raw in places, in terms of floor spacing, but she's going to be big for them. Stephanie Mavunga hit hard down low. I don't know how many rookies can say they have a block against Tina Charles to their credit, but she had a monster one. She's really tough. I don't know if Indiana has the right personnel to mentor her, though. Dupree's a different kind of player, and Achonwa can really only teach her the dirty stuff. I wonder if they could get Larkins in as a tutor.

No, in point of fact, I am not the world's biggest Natalie Achonwa fan. I can respect her midrange jumper, but I don't think she's ever set a legal screen in her life, and she certainly wasn't about to start today. She's mastered the veteran tricks at a precocious age. Driving directly into her was not the smartest thing Bria Hartley has ever done in her life, and Achonwa made that clear with a resounding block. Erica McCall fought like hell on the offensive glass and did big work on Tina Charles defensively. I don't know if she's starter material, but she's the kind of player you want to have on your team. She does work. I didn't know she could shoot threes like that, either.

I don't know if it's been brought to y'all's attention yet, but Kelsey Mitchell gets buckets. It's who she is. It's what she does. She killed us both from outside and on wild floaters in the lane (though if she gets a crew that actually calls travels, those drives are going to turn into turnovers). You can't leave her open. You just can't. And Indiana has the kind of ball movement that can get a player open in a hurry if the defense doesn't know how to switch properly. Tiffany Mitchell's a little bit tougher than Kelsey, a little bit better of a defender, and a little more willing to take contact. Too many Mitchells. Cannot cope. Erica Wheeler kept getting overlooked by the defense and sneaking to the free throw line for buckets. She's little and she's quick, and I'm surprised she never ended up matched up against Brittany Boyd.

Indiana's work on the offensive glass is amazing. They swarm the ball so well. When they're really cooking, their ball movement creates good looks for their plethora of shooters. They get caught on defensive mismatches, though. I'm pretty sure Tiffany Mitchell gave her teammates a piece of her mind for leaving her on Tina Charles.

Well. I think Sugar Rodgers is feeling better. Her lateral movement still leaves something to be desired, and her shots in the lane were coming up short, for which she tried to overcompensate by putting extra spin, but she was spot on as a spot-up shooter. So glad to see her offense back on track. Brittany Boyd knows how to turn the speed of the game up a couple of notches whenever she comes in- the ball moves faster and everything gets a little more intense. She's got to be more careful with her fouls, but at the same time, if you corral her intensity too much you take away much of her effectiveness.

Having Boyd and Sugar back allowed Katie to play Kia Nurse more at the three. I wasn't sure how thrilled I was with the concept of a three-guard lineup with that trio, but it seemed to work. Kia showed a lot of good ball thought on the floor. She's got a way better sense of the game and the floor than the average rookie. I'm so glad we have her. Amanda Zahui B spent enough time mixing it up with Achonwa I was expecting them to drop the gloves. (You get a Swede and a Canadian pushing each other around on the floor, you'd better believe I'm going to make hockey jokes.) She played a lot of minutes in the second half as Katie tried to give Tina as much rest as possible, and while she had a couple of strong plays down low, she was full of mistakes as well. It wasn't her best game, but I'll take it.

Tina Charles forced too many shots against too much defense. She played like it was a couple of years ago and she was getting no help, instead of in a scheme where things aren't supposed to revolve around her. That was part of what allowed Indiana back into the game in the fourth quarter- they were getting good ball movement and finding the open player, and we were force-feeding Tina. I don't know if that was the call from the bench, or the squad panicking, but we can't keep trying to make Tina happen on days when she's not happening. She's carried this team enough. Maybe everyone else can remember how to step up. That being said, I am desperately in love with her hook shot and it makes me happy in ways inappropriate to articulate here. And the previous point about leaning too heavily on Tina not withstanding, Marissa Coleman came up clutch to win the game for us with a three. She was quiet most of the day, but stepped up when we needed her. I like being able to shift her back to the three- I don't think we're at our best if she's at the four and Tina has to get battered around at center. Kia Vaughn alternated between making incredibly stupid plays on both sides of the court and making clutch physical plays down low. I'm starting to think her middle name should just be "Bless Her Heart". I did love the whooping she put on an Indiana fast break.

One of these days, Shavonte Zellous is going to get herself thrown out of a game for excessive yapping at the ref, or at whoever happens to be nearby, and it's going to be glorious. She got going at the free throw line early- for a good chunk of the first quarter, she was all of the offense we could muster. She didn't have a great game after that, but we didn't need her to. Bria Hartley made enough mistakes defensively that the concept of the stop-being-stupid beam was brought up. But then she put on her cape in the fourth quarter to pour in big shots and make a big block on the Kelsey Mitchell shot that could have tied the game. She stepped up when we needed her, and I'll take that. I'll take all of that.

That push in the fourth quarter helped save the game for us, but I don't think we would have needed to make it if we'd been able to stop the previous Indiana run. Sharing the cape is a good thing. (Especially if it's the nifty rainbow cape Maddie was sporting along with the Pride t-shirt.)

I appreciated the officials being clear in the calls that they did make. Fahy is good at communicating on floor to indicate what just happened, or at least his opinion thereof. There was a lot of contact on both sides that went un-called. Tiffany Mitchell is probably tired of being hit in the face. Being hit in the face is not fun. Do not try this at home.

Some salesman from a promotional product company was handing out generic samples in the rows behind us. He was not authorized to do so by the team. The extra noise was appreciated, but the freelancing is not cool.

This team is frustrating. But I love them. But I think Westchester is going to be the death of this franchise. Pride's usually one of the biggest draws of the year, and we couldn't even sell the place out. I can't really blame people, either. The travel is killer, even on weekends. Metro-North runs once an hour and costs $12-$20 round trip depending on age. Bee-Line buses are inconsistent and the ride takes eighty-leven kinds of forever, and best case scenario you make it down to Fordham. Tolls? If you have to cross a bridge, that's about $15 out of your pocket. And all of this, to get to a place that's not even worthy of college basketball, much less paid professionals. The natives are indubitably restless. So far, every time I've gone to WCC, I've heard at least one person say they're not coming back. Adds up over time. It really feels like Dolan has looked at the examples of franchises that have folded and teams that have moved, taken notes, and started to apply those lessons to the team he so clearly disdains.

Downer note to end these GNoD on, I suppose, but even when we win I can't shake this feeling of impending doom...