'The head of the snake': Can Sabrina Ionescu orchestrate Liberty to their first WNBA title?

NEW YORK — Sabrina Ionescu received the ball on the left wing from teammate Breanna Stewart and hoisted up the shot. The 3-pointer swished in, putting the New York Liberty up 11 over the Las Vegas Aces early in the fourth quarter in Game 1 of the WNBA semifinals. As Ionescu ran back on defense, she pointed to New York icon Spike Lee. Wearing a signed Ionescu jersey, Lee shot up from his courtside seat and pointed back in her direction.

Ionescu wasn’t done.

Not even 90 seconds later, she received the ball from Leonie Fiebich well beyond the top of the arc and with three-time MVP A’ja Wilson closing out on her, she drained a 30-footer, sending the Barclays Center crowd of 14,000 into a tizzy and forcing a Las Vegas timeout.

Moments after New York’s 87-77 win on Sunday, where Ionescu scored 21 points and dished five assists, ESPN’s Holly Rowe interviewed Ionescu and Stewart at half court, asking Ionescu what it feels like when she gets hot and turns into the “orchestra leader” of the Barclays faithful. The crowd roared before Rowe could even finish the question, while Stewart mimicked the movements of a conductor.

“This is what it sounds like,” Ionescu said, holding her hands in the air before applauding the fans.

The Liberty are now two wins away from avenging last year’s WNBA Finals loss to the Aces and returning to the championship series. From a chance to break the franchise’s postseason curse and win its first title. From Ionescu having a shot at securing the one thing that has eluded her in a storied young career.

Ionescu, the team’s longest-tenured player, is living up to the potential New York saw when it drafted her No. 1 four years ago. She’s the pulse of the Liberty, their offensive engine, “really kind of a motor with this team,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said Saturday. “Sabrina is the head of the snake.”

---

THE SCENE AND setting Sunday at Barclays were a far cry from what Ionescu experienced early in her career.

After being drafted first overall in 2020, Ionescu was sidelined with a severe ankle injury three games into the season, and the Liberty limped to a 2-20 record, marking some of the franchise’s darkest days. Even when Ionescu returned in 2021, she wasn’t 100 percent. New York recorded losing records the next two seasons, reaching the playoffs but not making it out of the first round.

Ionescu began to find her footing in 2022, when she earned her first all-WNBA and All-Star nods. As the Liberty went from afterthought to superteam in 2023, Ionescu established herself as a premier 3-point shooter, highlighted by her record-breaking performance in the WNBA 3-point contest and her 44.8% clip from deep on the season, third-best in the league.

Ionescu’s 18.2 points per game in 2024 are a career high, but her growth into a more well-rounded player has made her season special. She has taken on more playmaking duties, particularly with Courtney Vandersloot and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton in and out of the lineup, and has shown more commitment on the defensive end. But Ionescu has truly shined inside the arc, where she’s getting downhill more than ever and has implemented a floater. Her 36-point outburst in New York’s first-round series-clinching win over the Atlanta Dream was case-in-point, as 21 of her points were from 2-pointers or the free throw line.

Ionescu’s full recovery from her ankle injury allowed her to build strength, work on a quicker first step and regain her confidence in the offseason.

“I relied a lot on my shot because it was going in last year, so I just stuck with it, but I think being able to continue to get into the paint and figure out ways to attack angles, use my body, use my length, to create opportunities to score was huge.” Ionescu said Sunday. “I put a lot of work in the offseason to get back to that. Obviously, I did a lot of that in college, and then getting hurt derailed me a little bit, confidence-wise, of being able to take hits and take off on one leg and land on one leg inside the paint. It’s nice to see the work that I put in now come to life, especially in the playoffs.”

On a team featuring two MVPs in Stewart and Jonquel Jones, plus one of the best passers in league history in Vandersloot, Ionescu’s breakthrough year has helped elevate the Liberty into an even more potent offensive group. She was one of two players in the league (Caitlin Clark is the other) to average at least 16 points and 6 assists on the year. Along the way, she has cemented her status as a top-echelon player in the WNBA, coming in sixth in MVP voting.

“It’s been incredible watching her take a big leap this year,” Vandersloot said. “There were a lot of games where she just single-handedly won the game for us late. She carried a lot of the load. She’s just been able to find different ways to be effective, and that’s one of the things I’m so impressed with.”

Added Hammon: “She’s what makes them go — with her pace, her ability to read, her ability to put defenses in different dilemmas, and willingness to make the right play. Her presence and how she’s led this team this year to the best record in the league.”

---

THE LIBERTY HAVEN’T shied away from acknowledging their loss to the Aces in the 2023 WNBA Finals left them with a “scar,” as Vandersloot said, and that they have “unfinished business” to take care of in 2024, Ionescu added.

But the motivation for Ionescu is multilayered.

Vandersloot and Stewart, two of the team’s prized 2023 free agency acquisitions, have titles from previous WNBA stops, and Stewart won four straight in college. But Ionescu never had the chance to compete for a championship her season year at Oregon.

After leading the Ducks to their first Final Four appearance in 2019, Ionescu was eligible to leave for the WNBA after her junior season but returned to play alongside Satou Sabally and Ruthy Hebard. Her Ducks were coming off a Pac-12 tournament crown and were ranked No. 2 in the country when the NCAA tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m still not really over it,” Ionescu told ESPN in June. “Knowing I came back for that reason — to try to win a national championship — we were so close, and I think we were the best team. Playing really well, so committed to one another and knowing what our goal was. Being robbed of the opportunity to at least try to win? It’s just sad.

“Every time I hear players talking about college and winning a national championship and what that means — especially with that never having happened at Oregon — it’s one of the things I can’t claim. Hopefully, now in New York, I just feel like if we’re able to win a championship here, it would be like giving part of something back to the college ‘me’ who wasn’t able to go out and compete for one.”

As the college game’s triple-double leader, Ionescu “has an argument as one of the greatest college players in history,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves told ESPN last October.

But Ionescu needed time to come back from her injury, and frustration and disappointment reigned during her early years in the WNBA. The team could have given up on its supposed franchise player for not producing, she told ESPN in a May 2023 interview, but the Liberty had “this unwavering amount of support for me and stuck with me through that difficult time.”

“It’ll be more of a thank you if we’re able to win this year,” Ionescu said at the time. “It’d just be for all those people that have stuck with me and believed in me through this journey.”

A championship proved elusive last season. But 2024 could be shaping up to have a different outcome for the Liberty, in no small part due to Ionescu.

“She has the mindset. You can come in with all the talent, but if you don’t have the mindset, you don’t know how to win,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said. “She holds herself to high levels, high standards. She’s been in big games before, so we’re going to lean into that experience.”

ESPN’s Michael Voepel and Katie Barnes contributed to this report.