The waft of champagne followed Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart and Chris DeMarco like a shadow as they walked up to the podium.
Tuesday night’s celebration following the Liberty’s 93-85 win against the Las Vegas Aces in the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup championship game was in full swing. Their booze-drenched shirts and ski goggles sitting on top of their heads were proof of it.
“You can’t take these moments for granted,” DeMarco said. “Obviously, we have bigger goals this season — we want to win a WNBA championship. But this stuff matters, too. And if you can withstand the run that a team makes and find it, and our stars make big-time plays at the end of the game, lead us to victory, and that’s what winners do.”
The Liberty almost didn’t get that champagne celebration. They almost blew it.
New York squandered yet another double-digit second-half lead.
It was a story that had already been written multiple times this season.
But the Liberty dug deep and found a way.
It helps, of course, with Stewart on the floor. She’s the fearless leader of this group who was crowned MVP of Tuesday’s championship win after finishing with 25 points, 11 rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocks.
“I would trust Stewie with my life, honestly,” Fiebich said. “She’s a great person, player … she does a lot for the team that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet.”
Tuesday was the night the Liberty had to say enough is enough.
New York has blown too many double-digit leads to count, including an embarrassing 17-point advantage in a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks.
Not this time.
Jackie Young almost single-handedly erased the Liberty’s 17-point advantage. She led the Aces with a game-high 31 points (25 of which were scored in the second half).
Early in the fourth, Young stole the ball and turned it into a game-tying layup. She drained a go-ahead basket with 7:25 left.
But the Liberty responded.
Jonquel Jones forcefully pulled down a rebound and passed it off to Ionescu, who looked up the court and saw Pauline Astier on the run.
Ionescu passed the rock up to Astier, who laid it in.
The Barclays Center crowd went wild. Ionescu emphatically fist-pumped the air. Then, she pulled her rookie point guard in for a hug.
Astier’s layup punctuated the Liberty’s 10-0 run and forced Aces coach Becky Hammon to take a timeout.
The Aces didn’t back down.
But the Liberty held on.
In hindsight, Leonie Fiebich said, it never felt like the Liberty ever lost control of the game even when the score got close.
“The feeling was different today,” she said. “We were executing our game plan really well … we were fine.”
The Liberty became the first franchise in the league to win multiple in-season tournaments. They last won in 2023. They went to the Cup finals a year later but lost to the Minnesota Lynx.
“[The win] kind of sets the foundation for who we are and how we want to compete every single night,” Ionescu said. “Obviously, this was a huge team win for us, but I think just understanding the identity that we want to have as a team and how we want teams to feel when we come out there and we play a full 40 minutes.”
DeMarco’s message to the team after the win was brief.
“You have to embrace this,” he said. “We’re in there, pouring champagne on each other, like these moments matter, winning matters. And so that’s really what I’ll take from this.”