By Jeff Metcalfe
The Phoenix Mercury now know for sure they will win a potential WNBA playoff tiebreaker over the defending champion New York Liberty.
Extrapolating much beyond that based on the Mercury’s second-half dominance Saturday in an 80-63 win over the Liberty is dangerous.
The Liberty were without Sabrina Ioenscu, their leading scorer, and Nyara Sabally, Breanna Stewart still is on a minutes restriction, Jonquel Jones was coming off illness that kept her out Thursday and Natasha Cloud played wearing a mask to protect her fractured nose.
None of which detracts from the Mercury limiting New York to 24 second-half points for their fourth straight win and sixth in the last seven games. But Nate Tibbetts is a smart enough coach to know Phoenix is “playing catch up” with elite teams like Minnesota, New York and Las Vegas that have been together longer.
“We need these games,” Tibbetts said. “We need to go through good times and tough times. It’s part of learning how to be a good team. We’ve got five more to go and all those are going to matter just as much as this one. We can’t take a deep breath. We’ve still got work to do.”
The Mercury (25-14) are tied for third with Atlanta but already have lost the season series tiebreaker to the Dream as well as second place Las Vegas (26-14). The Liberty (24-16) are in fifth and would lose a tiebreaker to Phoenix because of the Mercury’s 3-1 season-series edge.
Meaning specifically that in a Phoenix-New York tie for fourth, the Mercury would host games 1 and 3 (if needed) in a best-of-3 first round playoff series.
“When you’re playing for the Phoenix Mercury, it matters,” Kahleah Copper said of home-court advantage. Certainly another sellout (13,252), 16th overall, reinforced that point as the Mercury improved to 14-6 at PHX Arena, their best home winning percentage in a decade.
Copper backed up her 28-point birthday performance Thursday with a game-high 22 including 5-of-10 from 3-point. Alyssa Thomas surpassed the Mercury single-season rebound record previously held by Brianna Turner (302 in 2021) and Natasha Mack came within two points of her second straight double-double.
Nothing stood out more than the Mercury defense.
The Liberty shot 37.5 percent in the second half, down from 50 in the first half, and gave up 26 points off 19 turnovers. They made six 3-points in the first half then were 2-of-12 from long range in the second half.
The Mercury’s 15-1 run to a 60-49 lead early in the fourth quarter largely put the game away with New York drawing no closer than six thereafter.
” We want to push on any kind of misses and then flow into our offense,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said. “In the second half, we were just taking it out of the basket then we had to get into our sets, and they were just blowing us up. We’ve just got to do better with all the little details.”
Ionescu scored 29 in New York’s lone win over the Mercury – 89-76 on July 25 – when the Liberty had not yet signed Belgium star Emma Meesseman. Meesseman scored a team-high 17 Saturday when New York started a big lineup with her, Stewart and Jones.
All of which goes into the memory bank and scouting plans for what could be ahead when the playoffs begin Sept. 14.
The Mercury’s five games until then are home against Indiana (Tuesday) and Los Angeles and away against Washington, Connecticut and Dallas. They are a combined 10-2 against those teams so holding onto at least fourth place is certainly do-able.
Beyond that, it remains to be seen how regular-season wins over New York will translate when season elimination is on the line.
“Obviously, today was huge for seeding implications and things like that, but you know, aside from that, we just want the game to feel better,” Liberty star Stewart said. “We want to play better, we want to be peaking, and today wasn’t a good showing of that.”
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