MINNEAPOLIS — Sabrina Ionescu watched Breanna Stewart carry the New York Liberty all night long, until it was time to win the game.
Then, as coach Sandy Brondello made clear as the visitors huddled up, the ball was hers.
“In the timeout, Sandy was like, ‘You’re going to shoot the shot,'” Ionescu recalled.
The star guard made it, sinking a 3-pointer from 28 feet with a second remaining that gave the top-seeded Liberty an 80-77 victory over the second-seeded Minnesota Lynx on Wednesday night at the Target Center, moving New York a win away from an elusive first league title.
The Liberty hold a 2-1 advantage in the best-of-five WNBA Finals — the first time the franchise has ever been ahead in the championship round — and can win the series Friday night in Minneapolis. The Lynx need a win then just to force a decisive Game 5 back in New York on Sunday.
“We know we’re one game away from winning the championship, and I think that they are going to give us their best shot,” said Stewart, who was WNBA Finals MVP both times she won titles with the Seattle Storm (2018, 2020). “They are going to give everything they have got, and you know what, so are we. The turnaround is quick, but we are going to continue to be ready.”
Ionescu said she had to watch a replay of her shot after the game to see exactly what happened.
“I didn’t even really remember it. I had to go look at the video really quickly to see, like, how far I was,” the three-time WNBA All-Star said. “I feel like I was able to get a little separation in range and get a really good shot to go.”
With the game tied at 77, Ionescu had the ball and dribbled around before pulling up a few steps behind the arc and hitting the tiebreaking shot.
“It’s pretty special. It was never in doubt. Obviously Stewie got us back in there, willed us in there, but I thought: ‘The right time; this is Sabrina,'” Brondello said. “She just made a big shot. She’s a great shooter, and she just needed a little bit of separation.”
Stewart scored 22 of the team’s 45 points in the second half and finished with 30 points, 11 rebounds and four blocked shots.
“We don’t win this game without Stewie,” Ionescu said. “There’s nothing I can say. That shot’s nice, but what she was able to do for us tonight willed us back into the game.”
Minnesota didn’t get a real shot to tie at the buzzer.
“Great player made a good shot,” Minnesota guard Kayla McBride said. “I guarded her for 40 minutes.”
The Liberty, who erased a 15-point deficit Wednesday, are one of the founding franchises of the league that dates to 1997. This is their sixth appearance in the WNBA Finals, including a trip last year during Stewart’s first season in New York.
“There’s a lot of things that we didn’t do right tonight …,” Stewart said. “I think that we’re happy we got this win, but the job’s not done.”
Trailing 73-69 with 2:26 left in the fourth quarter, the Liberty scored eight straight points, with the first five in that run by Jonquel Jones. Ionescu, who had a relatively quiet game, then hit a 3 after a Lynx miss to make it 77-73 with 55.5 seconds left.
Bridget Carleton got the Lynx within 77-75 with a layup 21 seconds later. On New York’s next possession, Ionescu had a 3-point try go halfway through the basket before popping out, and Minnesota got the rebound.
Lynx star Napheesa Collier was then fouled with 16 seconds left and hit both free throws to tie it, setting up the exciting finish. Collier finished with 22 points and McBride had 19.
“Our defense gave us a chance to win the game, period, and our offense is going to help our defense,” Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve said. “If you told me that we would have got the amount of stops that we did and we were playing off that, and we wouldn’t have scored 80, that would be surprising to me.”
The Lynx flipped the script of the first two games, building a double-digit lead in the first half. Minnesota, which only led for just more than three minutes in the first two contests, was up 60-50 with 2:28 left in the third quarter before the Liberty closed to 62-61 by the end of the period. Stewart scored the final five points, including a three-point play with 19 seconds left.
She then scored the first eight points for New York in the fourth quarter, tying the game at 69 with another three-point play with 6:18 left.
Carleton hit two free throws to break the tie 12 seconds later. Neither team would score again until Courtney Williams hit a baseline pull-up shot with 2:26 left to give the Lynx a four-point advantage.
“We got the shots that we wanted,” Williams said. “We got good shots, and we just didn’t convert, and they did. Again, great players make great plays. That’s kind of how the game played out.”