Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the universe. Before Sunday afternoon, I did not think it metaphysically possible for the New York Liberty’s season to get more unpleasant than it has been for several injury-riddled months now. But a few minutes into overtime of New York’s first-round Game 1 against the Phoenix Mercury, there was Breanna Stewart’s left knee to show up my puny imagination.
It was a bad basketball game—entertaining, maybe, and the most competitive of the Sunday playoff slate, but not one either team could be particularly proud of. Satou Sabally shot an astounding 2-of-17 from the field, and it somehow felt worse; Emma Meesseman, who played 13 minutes in her team’s 76-69 win over Phoenix, was a minus-17. In Meesseman’s defense, the Liberty’s other bench players were also going through it, and head coach Sandy Brondello trusted her options there so little by the end that most of the starters played 40 minutes. (Sabrina Ionescu led the team with 43.)
Though the Liberty couldn’t generate any offense for long stretches of the game, it seemed like those coasting, talented bastards were going to get away with it. Dependable playoff riser Natasha Cloud took advantage of the space defenses are usually OK giving her, making 3-of-6 outside attempts and finishing with 23 points. “I think where she’s grown this year is just really being steady, and when they’re going under, which every team does, is being been ready to shoot that three ball. And she’s been shooting the three ball extremely well lately,” Brondello said after the game.
After Cloud opened overtime scoring with a three, the Liberty’s next basket swung the game (in a good way for New York) and may have swung the series (in a bad way for New York). Stewart cut to the basket past Alyssa Thomas for a layup and was fouled by Sabally in the air. The slow-motion replay showed her wincing on the way up, and when she went down, she stayed down, yelling and clutching at her left knee. Stewart’s teammates pulled her back up after a bit, and you could hear her in pain on the broadcast.
Stewart re-entered the game with a brace, still clearly hurting on her way to the free throw line to try and finish the and-one. There were exactly three minutes left in OT, and she didn’t actually check out of the game until close to the two-minute mark. It testifies to Stewart’s knack for being useful in some way no matter how the rest of her night is going, as well as Phoenix’s extremely generous shot selection, that she wasn’t totally ineffective in her sad, hobbled 54 post-injury seconds out there. Looking about as mobile as the actual Statue of Liberty, Stewart still managed to force misses on a couple positions before signaling to the sideline. “She asked me to sub her out there, and she looked uncomfortable, so that was the reason we took her out there,” Brondello explained in a gloomy post-win press conference with no injury update. “We’ll just be hoping that she’ll be OK.”
When she returned from an Achilles tear in the 2020 season, Stewart was no worse for it: She won Finals MVP that year and finished second in MVP voting. But the knee and leg injuries have kept piling up. With the Seattle Storm poised to repeat as champions, Stewart missed the end of the 2021 season with a minor injury to her other Achilles. This past offseason, she had a scope on her right knee, and missed another 13 games this regular season with a bone bruise on the same knee. The injuries also seem to be taking their toll mechanically. At the end of Stewart’s first season with New York, her career three-point percentage was right around 37 percent. For two straight seasons now, it’s been sub-30.
Stewart is so good at so many other things that despite the disappearance of her shot, she’s still one of the WNBA’s best players. And if the Liberty don’t have someone doing those things in Game 2 in Brooklyn on Wednesday, it’s hard to see a real path forward for them without their defensive glue. The 13 games without her in the regular season did not inspire much confidence: New York went 5-8, several of the losses to lottery teams. If the news on her knee is good, it might still be hard to celebrate. The way this season is going, that probably just means there’s an even worse injury waiting around the corner.
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