LIBERTY ON THE BRINK
This past weekend’s home-and-home series with the Sky typified everything about the Liberty’s season.
The last-place Liberty traveled to Chicago on Friday night and demonstrated why they are where they are in the standings, losing by 19. Just when their chances of making the playoffs looked as good as the Knicks’, the Liberty rebounded with a 14-point win over the Sky on Sunday afternoon at the Garden, leaving them suddenly 1½ games out of the fourth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
Let the exasperating inconsistency continue.
“We’ve been a good basketball team all season long, so it doesn’t surprise me that we’ve still got our sights on the postseason,” said interim head coach Anne Donovan. “We’ve just been an inconsistent team.”
With five games remaining in the regular season, time becomes an increasing factor for a Liberty team that has done just enough to keep the remaining games relevant. Working in their favor is that three of the games are at home and three come against teams they’re trying to pass in the standings.
Tonight, the Liberty (12-17) will try to keep their postseason hopes alive when they host the playoff-bound Storm (7:30, no TV), who are in second place in the West. In their previous meeting, the Liberty lost 70-69 in Seattle.
“We’ve played well against every team. There’s no one we haven’t been competitive with, even in losses,” said Donovan, who was head coach of the Storm from 2003-07 and led the squad to the 2004 WNBA title. “We know we can play against teams in the league. When we play good basketball we know how good we can be. We can’t be talking about getting consistent. We have to be consistent.”
