June 9th, 2019: Las Vegas at New York

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Defense and a balanced attack powered the New York Liberty to their first win of 2019 as they defeated the Las Vegas Aces 88-78. Tina Charles had 21 points to lead the Liberty, with Bria Hartley chipping in 17 points and six assists and Kia Nurse adding 15 points. Kayla McBride led all scorers with 25 points, and Liz Cambage had a double-double of 17 points and 10 rebounds.

For physical play, endangered point guards, a rousing return, and getting off the schneid, join your intrepid and hectic blogger after the jump.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends; it's game day at That Dump in Westchester, as the New York Liberty take on the Las Vegas Aces. Your intrepid blogger is going the long way around today, because I don't feel like dealing with Metro-North, Metro-North fares, and things potentially being on fire. Things being on fire is not fun unless they are shooters.

Just for the record, if Liz Cambage wants to express her opinion of That Dump in a public setting, I volunteer to hand her a mic.

Since the entire Aces coaching staff was at the game on Friday, I assume we have been fully scouted and will therefore be obliterated in a logical and well-executed fashion. And then we lose players to Eurobasket. I'm not even there yet and I'm already too tired for this.

I hate This Dump. I hate the ever more asinine security procedures we go through. Now they have to look at your keys just in case you're carrying a weapon on them. First of all, WTF, this is new. Second of all, the odds are that any weapon on a set of keys is being carried by a woman in self-defense, which, if you are trying to take that from someone at a Liberty game, that's not going to end well. Third of all, any Girl Scout worth her salt- which there should be plenty of on Scout Day- knows that the keys themselves are a weapon three different ways, so either you have to confiscate the keys or abandon this whole security theater nonsense.

(Also, do not touch my wallet. It is in my bag for a reason. Do not touch my wallet.)

(Also, do not gaslight me into thinking I touched the sides of the metal detector when I know damn well my fat ass didn't.)

Honestly, I'm already ready to fight someone and Vegas hasn't even taken the floor.

We're not losing. I am extremely confused by this. It's 45-37 Liberty at the half. Tina Charles has 12 points to lead New York, but it's been a really balanced effort. Bria Hartley got the start in place of Asia Durr, who looks like she'd really rather be at home in bed with a fuzzy blanket and a mug of chicken soup. Vegas has 10 points each from Liz Cambage and Kayla McBride, but Cambage looks really frustrated about it.

Our halftime entertainment is a martial arts presentation that has not been terribly spectacular except for occasional flying pieces of wood.

We're still having a lot of moments where the offense is more improvisational than structured, but it's mostly working. I anticipate the Aces adjusting, because we're not a second half team right now.

My heart goes out to Sydney Colson and getting her head busted open when Bria sat on her. Get better soon, Syd!

Between the sneakers and the short-sleeved top, Spoon looks ready to suit up in case of emergency lack of point guard. Don't tempt Bill, Teresa.

Well, this is a pleasant surprise. I was not expecting to get the win against Las Vegas's size and skill. But while they have an imposing front line, possibly the most imposing front line in the league (except maybe Los Angeles), their backcourt can be streaky and their bench does not seem consistent. And if Colson is out for any length of time, they're in for some interesting juggling of their rotation.

I was honestly surprised that Carolyn Swords and JiSu Park got so few minutes. Swords is pretty solid, and Park showed a lot of potential last year. I guess Dearica Hamby's emergence in the early part of the season has put the kibosh on that, and Park certainly looks less confident than she did last year. Hamby was in foul trouble for much of the game, which somewhat limited her effectiveness; she was like a pinball out there for stretches, and I was surprised that Laimbeer kept her on the floor with five fouls late in the game.

Sugar Rodgers got an enormous cheer from the crowd the first time she checked into the game, and then she reminded us why some of us were perfectly okay with letting her go by throwing the ball out of bounds. She does have a pretty shot, but she's streaky. We know this. Tamera Young hit a three-pointer, and for a moment I wondered what timeline I had managed to wander into. I guess she came in for her defense? Ugh, I feel so embarrassingly naked without a scorecard, even an improvised one (my printer decided it didn't like my ink cartridge). Sydney Colson has nice speed, and heaven knows Vegas needs a ballhandler off the bench, so I hope she and her face are all right.

Jackie Young has an incredible first step. Once she gets the hang of how to finish with it, she's going to be amazing. But it seems like she's trying to make shots that she could get against college defenses, not having yet adjusted to the fact that professional defenses are usually bigger, faster, and more physical. That's part of the rookie learning curve, and I get that. She's going to be fine (though I think she could have used another year in college) and she's going to be the kind of player who sticks around because she can do a little bit of everything well- she was picking up a lot of our long rebounds that bounced strangely off ill-advised jumpers. Kelsey Plum seems to need a lot more time to wind up on her jumper than I remember her needing once upon a time. Maybe it was our defense, or maybe she was having a bad day, but she just didn't seem to fit in whatever Las Vegas was trying to run. I don't know if she can co-exist with two ball-dominant inside presences like Wilson and Cambage; I don't know if she really knows how to.

Kayla McBride gets buckets, whether they're inside on strength or outside on jumpers. I have to admire her toughness, I guess. She killed us on our endless switches, because no one on the team seemed to know how to defend her. I don't know if we could have done it even if we did, but that's a whole other story. She kept the Aces in the game most of the day. A'ja Wilson got a lot of hard looks and took a lot of contested shots. I don't know if she really needed to take some of them. She and Tina Charles were going at it hammer and tongs most of the day, throwing shoulders and hips into each other on every possession on both sides of the floor. I don't know if Tina was in her head, or if the general physicality of the game was just getting to her, but she took a lot of bad shots. It's not like we gave her good shots to take, but she didn't show the discernment not to take the bad ones that stretched her out like she thought she was Reed Richards or Helen Parr. She didn't have the angles. Liz Cambage did well when she got away from the basket, which seems counterintuitive given her height advantage over everyone who played for the Liberty, but when she got the midrange shot going, she was able to elevate over her defenders, while smaller but stockier defenders were able to leverage their size to move her. I don't know if she's slimmed down, or if her Achilles issue is making it harder for her to plant, but she was getting moved around a lot by our defense in ways that I was not expecting.

I don't know if Las Vegas has the personnel to do the things that they want to do right now. It's like they have two different teams, the backcourt-oriented one and the frontcourt-oriented one, and Bill hasn't figured out how to mesh them all together yet. McBride seems to be the only one who knows how to shift between the two systems.

Poor Asia. She did not look okay. I would like to see some more minutes for our deep bench, especially when the game is decided, but on the other hand, it's become clear that Nayo and Tiffany are nothing but placeholders for Kiah and Marine, there to be extra bodies and provide some enthusiasm (at least in Tiffany's case; Nayo mostly seems like she'd like to return to Canada already).

Great rebounding work and physical defense from Reshanda Gray in this one. She got low on Cambage and made her work. I would have liked to have seen more consistent finishing at the rim from her, but I will most definitely take the screens, the rebounding, and the defense (there was one screen she had on a drive by... I think Tanisha?... that was glorious and perfect). She's really made the most of this chance with New York, and I think it's affected our roster choices. I'd a million times rather have her energy than the lack of it Nayo's shown so far this year, and I don't think that was the original plan. Rebecca Allen continues to exist in a liminal space between the frontcourt and the backcourt- her offense has been almost all perimeter-oriented, but she does a lot of her work on the other side of the floor crashing the glass. It gives us flexibility, but it also leads to mismatches. Fortunately, the dark necromantic ritual that powers Tanisha Wright here at the end of her career was at its peak, and she had her best game of the season. The offense was clicking with her in the game, her defensive instincts were on point, and she looked (mostly) like the heady veteran presence she was supposed to be for us. I like this version of Tanisha. Okay, I maybe don't like the version that throws passes into the crowd, but other than that I was thrilled with her play.

And that was our bench. I can't really say I'm surprised, except for Katie's utter lack of trust in Han Xu.

On one hand, Brittany Boyd actually showcased a perimeter game in the second half. On the other hand, the mechanics of her jumper still need a lot of work, which is not a good thing for a player in her fifth professional season, and she committed some incredibly stupid mistakes on the floor. (I mean, really. Inbounding violation? I expect better.) It was clear that she was the third best point guard for the Liberty in this game, because Tanisha was playing well and Bria Hartley was playing really well. So that's a thing I don't know how to feel about. According to the starting lineup and the box score, Bria started at small forward, but she spent most of her time running point, even when Boyd was in the game, which left Boyd hung out to dry. Bria played really well- she hit her shots at the right time, and the offense just seemed to click when she was in the game. I thought there were stretches where she was trying to do too much and the offense became one-dimensional, but that's not a problem unique to her, so I'm going to throw that on Katie. Kia Nurse also seemed to be forcing shots. She's presenting herself as a solid second scoring option, but I don't know if she's doing it in the flow of the offense. Then again, I don't know if our offense has a flow to be in, so that's a problem. I honestly don't know what to think of her sometimes.

Amanda Zahui B is not necessarily great when it comes to rotating on defense, but once she was on her man, she was a star. She made Cambage work and got some good blocks in on the inside. I am not enthralled by her love for the three-pointer, especially when it's not going down, but I love the work she put in defensively. That's been one of the things Liberty fans have been riding her about for quite some time, so if she's making strides in that department, more power to her. (Also, really, Vegas, you should know better. You don't mess with the hair.) Tina Charles continues to be doubled and tripled, and continues to try and shoot through it. Her teammates did a better job of making themselves available on the kick out, but Tina's still trying to do too much offensively, and that's a habit she has to break. She's got talent around her- she and they just need to be aware of it and trust in it. This was probably the most physical game we've seen from her all year, and I don't know if that was Katie's game plan, Bill's game plan, or a natural cause and effect of her going at it with Wilson. But she was going hard on the glass and spending a lot more time in the paint than she has been most of the year.

There was so much motion in this game! And it was a good thing! For the first time this year, the offense was moving, both in terms of pace and in terms of people not just standing around waiting for things to happen. It was a refreshing change. I mean, yes, there were still times when whoever had the ball forgot that she had teammates and tried to go it alone, but there were fewer of them than there were in the last few games. Maybe we're turning a corner. I wouldn't place money on it, but anything can happen.

There was a lot of physical play on both sides. Bria should probably stop sitting on people. Conversely, the crew was like "LOL what even are travels". I think one of the officials had family over in the next section- either that, or someone was heckling her particularly hard and she wanted security to know about them. It wasn't us, I swear.

We've still got deep-seated issues. But this game showed what we can be if we get our act together and play to our potential. We have enough talent to compete; when we put in the extra work, it puts us over the top.