The New York Liberty have lost six of nine games, most recently a nine-point-but-not-really-that-close defeat to the Seattle Storm on Sunday afternoon. What happened? Well, they scored six points in the third quarter.
Postgame, Sandy Brondello said: “For me, it’s not the offense, it’s the defense.”
I have to respectfully disagree there, but the Liberty have gone from 9-0 to 12-6 because they’ve lost many different games. The one saving grace is that they’ve exclusively been against good, maybe even great teams.
But in road games against the Phoenix Mercury and Indiana Fever, they gave up triple-digits due to soft perimeter defense, getting punished every time they left a 3-point shooter open.