MINNEAPOLIS — Somehow, this will end, though your guess is as good as mine. In Game 4 on Friday night, the Lynx and Liberty arrived in a familiar place by unfamiliar means. Neither team bothered with the pretense of an early lead or deficit. This time, they played a game that from tip to buzzer felt true to the series: weird, tense, a matter of execution more than scheme. A Jonquel Jones layup and-one to even things up, 80-80, with a minute left, was the 13th tying score of the game. With 18 seconds left, the Lynx searching for a last shot, Bridget Carleton grabbed an offensive rebound and was fouled on the putback attempt. She made two free throws for a 14th and final lead change, 82-80. The WNBA’s two best teams head where they have long seemed destined, to a decisive Game 5 in New York on Sunday night.
Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve explained the game’s closeness in terms of “information gathered.” Game 5 will be the ninth time these teams have played each other this season, and the familiarity is starting to show. “Everything is getting harder,” Reeve said. “There’s no secrets at this point.” The teams’ de facto captains, products of the same college program and models of the league’s richness at power forward, pose identical matchup problems to each other. The lead guards can claim crowning moments. Last night, the two starting centers traded threes. Styles make fights, maybe, but never discount the thrill of a pointing Spider-Man series.
Cancel out the advantages these teams have enjoyed in the regular season—their roaming and disruptive defensive leaders, their mobile bigs, their spacing, their depth—and what do you have left? A series decided entirely on the margins, on the basis of one rebound or one missed bunny or one turnover or one tough shot. Close games are everyone’s fault and to everyone’s credit. For all the rightful, validated attention to the star matchups in this series, my Game 4 notes are littered with names of eye-catching role players and bench players: Leo Fiebich, Ceci Zandalasini, Dorka Juhász, Nyara Sabally. Whatever you think will make the difference in Game 5, you’re right.
Maybe it’s fatigue. Almost every player in the postseason is playing the longest postseason of her WNBA career after one of the longest regular seasons of her career. (The “off day” between Games 4 and 5 is also a travel day.) Alanna Smith played some fantastic late-game possessions and heavy minutes through her injury but is still moving noticeably slower. Collier and Stewart have both spent considerable energy anchoring their teams’ defenses; it’s hard not to draw a line from Stewart’s defensive prodigiousness to her 5-for-21 shooting night, brought on by a total lack of legs.
Maybe it’s the officials, who tend to make themselves known in WNBA games. If any moment in these Finals has felt especially thrilling, it was courtesy of Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello, who could look chipper if she were being told her house burned down. After Friday’s game, she used a question that was more or less “talk about how good your players are” as an opportunity to bring up the game’s free-throw disparity—the Lynx got 20 attempts at the line to the Liberty’s nine. (For what it’s worth, I disliked a couple early calls on Stewart and Jones, though Stewart then got to commit three fouls between her fourth and fifth.) “I’m one of the nicest bloody coaches in this league but this pisses me off,” Brondello said, scandalizing the entire room. “Just be fair. If they’re getting hit, it’s a bloody foul.” She alluded to her counterpart’s own press conference ref-working. After Game 3, Reeve had brought up differences in the way she thought Stewart and Collier were officiated.
Brondello had another regret, another moment that might have made the difference, when the game was still 80-80 with 30 seconds left. After Jonquel Jones missed a midrange fadeaway, Stewart, with just about all the energy she had left, yanked the offensive rebound away from Kayla McBride. Brondello said she had tried to call a timeout after that, but that the referees never heard her. Stewart kicked the ball out to Ionescu for a reset, but it ended up back in her hands and the possession ended in a shot-clock violation when Stewart’s turnaround attempt missed the rim. Everyone could have done better, Brondello said, about to scandalize the room again, “including me getting that fucking timeout.” But then, while Jones patted her, sweetly, on the back, Brondello apologized for swearing. A series can only contain so many surprises.
