‘Spider-Woman’ Ionescu dominates, carrying Liberty into WNBA semifinals

Moments later, Ionescu saw that Betnijah Laney-Hamilton was walking back to the Liberty locker room behind where Rowe was conducting the postgame interview. Without looking at Laney-Hamilton, Ionescu knew she was there and put out her hand to nonverbally congratulate her teammate on her contributions to the game. 

“I think Sab is just a great teammate,” Breanna Stewart said to reporters postgame. “She’s obviously a great player, but a great person, and at the end of the day, wants to win, and the way that she continues to kind of be there for people on and off the court is who she is, and people don’t always see that.”

People saw it a bit more last night. The Liberty defeated the Dream, 91-82, to advance to the WNBA semifinals for a second straight year. Ionescu tallied up 36 points on 12-for-23 shooting along with nine assists and three steals. She tied WNBA great Cappie Pondexter for the highest-scoring playoff game in Liberty franchise history. According to ESPN, she created 55 total points in the Liberty’s win, the second most in league postseason history in a series-clinching game. Alyssa Thomas created 58 points last season. 

As MVP chants persisted in the background, Ionescu was asked if her performance on Tuesday night was a personal statement game after struggling to shoot the ball efficiently following the Olympic break and some games missed because of a neck injury.

But, instead of talking about her performance and what this meant to her, she stated that she did whatever it took for her team to win. It didn’t matter that she was scoring the points as long as the points were scored. All game long, Ionescu was looking for ways to get the most efficient looks for her team. 

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In the first half, Ionescu found her teammates. She took advantage of each time Stewart was matched up with the smaller Rhyne Howard. If Stewart was posting up or on the move, Ionescu found her for eight of her 13 total points. Ionescu’s passes in the first quarter led to two separate and-ones from Laney-Hamilton and Jones. Ioenscu scored in the first half too, but it was done at a less efficient pace: 13 points on 4-of-12 shooting. But distributing the ball was what her team needed at that time. 

But then when Stewart and Laney-Hamilton began missing some shots they usually make in the third quarter, Ionescu took matters into her own hands because she knew that’s what had to be done to avoid flying to Atlanta for Game 3. She viewed Tuesday night as do or die for the Liberty. She and her teammates wanted the extra rest before the semifinals, and Ionescu made sure that she and her teammates were going to get it. 

Ionescu got downhill and flexed her quicker first step which became a critical and noticeable part of her dominance prior to the Olympic break. She used double screens, high ball screens and then out-willed her defenders in Jordin Canada and Allisha Gray. She made layups within 10 feet and pullups in the midrange. She finished the third with 11 points on 5-of-6 from the field. 

“My focus was get downhill, get some easy ones,” Ionescu said about her intentions in the third quarter. “We were getting stops defensively, we were running. At the end of the second quarter, we got a little 3-point-happy. And we’re shooting some shots that normally go in but weren’t. I think there was a point where we kept getting stops and weren’t scoring. We were taking some tough shots, and that was kind of the point where I was like, I gotta get into the paint, see if I can draw some fouls and collapse the defense in order to get us some easier looks. And thankfully, the paint was wide open, so I was able to just continue to drive, get to the basket, get some easy ones to fall. And I think that took a little bit of pressure off our back as well.”

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There were emphatic celebrations that kept the Barclays Center crowd roaring and humming while the Liberty were trying to come back from being down as many as eight to the Dream. The most noticeable one came with 5:08 remaining in the third quarter when Ionescu used a Jones screen to allow her to accelerate past Canada and draw the foul on former Liberty legend Tina Charles. Her and-one celebration looked like she was air-drumming a snare or hi-hat. 

At the end of the third quarter with the Liberty up by just two, head coach Sandy Brondello made an adjustment that would allow the Liberty to ride the hot hand in Ionescu more efficiently and in a different way. She subbed Courtney Vandersloot back into the game for the entirety of the fourth quarter to get Ionescu more open looks off the ball. It worked. Ionescu scored 12 points on 3-for-5 shooting, with all her makes coming off of Vandersloot assists. 

“I thought late in the fourth quarter it was great to get her off the ball, to free her up a little bit as well too, with the movement so she could get downhill,” Brondello said. “I thought Slooty came in and complemented her very well.”

Ionescu’s looks in the fourth were executed so well that a Barclays Center security guard pondered why she was that open on the right wing. With 6:32 left in the fourth quarter, Ionescu went through an elevator door screen from Leonie Fiebich and Jones which gave her enough time to curl around Jones and fire on what looked like a wide open 3-point shot.

Ionescu’s second half surge was an efficient 23 points on 8-for-11 shooting including 2-for-2 from 3-point range. Her scoring came at all three levels and was more balanced reflecting and symbolizing the work she did during the offseason. 

“She’s just somebody who’s gotten better over her time in the W and kudos to her for putting in that work and understanding this is the best league in the world,” Dream head coach and former WNBA player Tanisha Wright said.  “You got to stay hungry, you know what I mean? In this league, and you got to continue to add, you got to continue to get better and she’s done that.”

What Ionescu also got on Tuesday night was a New York moment, and possibly a new nickname? Could it be possible that Ioenscu’s third quarter surge was a result of her having an exchange with Spike Lee? The interaction made her night. 

The filmmaker gave Ionescu a high-five right before she inbounded the ball and eventually scored a layup off a well-drawn double screen play following the Liberty’s timeout. “I felt like New York was just injected into my veins,” Ionescu said, eliciting a belly laugh from Brondello and a cackle from Jones. “At that moment, I was like we’re winning this.” 

“She was like Spider-Woman,” Jones said through a laugh.

And just like how she shares victories with her teammates, Ionescu made sure to share some of that Lee magic with reporters in the room postgame.

She took her right hand and dapped up almost everyone sitting at the postgame press conference. That carefree fun and sense of humor and dynamic play that we saw earlier this season in Ionescu has returned, and at the right time too.

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