May 23, 2023
Locked on Women’s Basketball: Breanna Stewart scores 45, New York Liberty’s opening night loss fades
By The Next
Howard and Jackie chat about Breanna Stewart's 45 points performance — and what it means for New York to have a caliber player like Stewie
It’s time for another Locked on Women’s Basketball podcast episode. Breanna Stewart scored 45 in Sunday’s win over the Fever, and two games in, we’re still coming to terms with what the Liberty can be. Host Howard Megdal and Jackie Powell connect to talk all things Stewart, the supporting cast (loads of Betnijah Laney and Kayla Thornton talk) and much more.
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Jackie talks about Breanna Stewart’s 45 points performance and how it met the moment:
“Oh god. I mean, that’s even an understatement to say that it met the moment. It leaves you speechless, to be quite honest. I think that was sort of the vibe in the pressroom and even in our postgame scrums like Jonquel Jones comes out and I say to her, how is Stewie able to do something like this? And so first, she starts a bit technical, and she’s sort of like, yes, obviously, her very high release point makes her pretty much unguardable and yada, yada. And then she sort of stops and is like, this is what she does; there isn’t much you can say about it. This is what she does. And this is who she is.”
Jackie talks about what it means for the Liberty to have a caliber star player like Stewart in the organization:
“I think this is a franchise that has spent many years without someone like this. And so it takes some getting used to. And it sort of manifested itself in many different ways. I mean, it wasn’t just on the court, which we could have a whole discussion about that. I mean, there was a clip that someone on the internet clipped where Sabrina Ionescu had an open look. And she hesitated, and then she finds Stewie rolling to the basket, boom. It was interesting; you were talking about how like, this is what she does. She’s able to do this. She does this wherever she goes.
And my mind kept thinking back to the fact that maybe she wasn’t really able to do what she does with Seattle last year. She did not have enough talent around her to get where she wanted to go. And so obviously, at the end of the game, she said, yeah, I think I made the right decision. I think there are many reasons for her saying that she made the right decision, which we can get into later. But when it comes to the Liberty, it was the amount of circumstance and the amount of arena special effects that they put into this opener, which I will assume will continue throughout the season. That doesn’t happen when you don’t have Breanna Stewart and the other very talented players.”
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