Betnijah Laney-Hamilton’s herculean performance in WNBA Finals Game 2 powers Liberty to series-tying win

Sabrina Ionescu gave her a high-five first which flowed into a two-arm squeeze. Nyara Sabally couldn’t stop smiling with her arm around Laney-Hamilton. Kayla Thornton held both of Laney-Hamilton’s hands in hers together up above their heads. 

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As the Liberty walked into their team huddle at center court following the 80-66 win over the Minnesota Lynx to even the series at one game apiece, Courtney Vandersloot made sure she too put her arm around Laney-Hamilton. And then right before the ESPN broadcast did its postgame interview, Breanna Stewart pulled Laney-Hamilton in for a squeeze with her right arm. 

Rookie Jaylyn Sherrod had to wait her turn so she could embrace, you guessed it, Laney-Hamilton — who scored 20 points on 8-for-14 shooting (4-for-6 from three), adding two rebounds and two assists in the Liberty’s must-win Game 2. 

“They have been going under on screens so we encouraged [Laney-Hamilton] to shoot the three,” Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said postgame. “She’s a great 3-point shooter. She was stroking it yesterday in practice before the game.”

The significance of Laney-Hamilton’s performance cannot be understated. Prior to Sunday afternoon’s performance, her playoff shooting splits were a lackluster 16-for-55 (29.1%) from the field alongside 4-for-22 (18.2 %) from three. Prior to Sunday afternoon, she had only one playoff game this season scoring in double digits. She scored 10 points on 5-for-10 shooting along with five assists in the Liberty’s first playoff win against the Atlanta Dream on Sept. 22. 

There have been questions about whether or not she’s been healthy enough to play. Following a minor right knee procedure prior to the Olympic break, Laney-Hamilton appeared to re-injure that same knee during a regular season game against the Las Vegas Aces. While the Liberty announced that Laney-Hamilton “avoided significant injury” following the scare against the Aces, she hasn’t looked quite the same since her knee was hyper-flexed following a collision with teammate Jonquel Jones. 

Prior to Sunday afternoon, Laney-Hamilton hadn’t played in 30 minutes or more since the first two playoff games against the Dream. During the four-game series against the Aces in the semifinals, Laney-Hamilton didn’t play for more than 25 minutes. To preserve Laney-Hamilton during the semifinals, Brondello had been intentional to deploy her in five-minute spurts during games.

“Number one, B’s a warrior,” Brondello said about Laney-Hamilton pregame on Sunday. “I think everyone can see she’s not 100% — I mean, you don’t have to be Einstein. But she gets out there and works her butt off. She gives us everything she can. And you see that I rotate her a little bit earlier. Try not to get too many, go too long stretches … she’s gonna leave it all out there.”

This was following Brondello’s answer the day before as to why she didn’t sub Laney-Hamilton in with 5.5 seconds left in the fourth quarter prior to the four-point swing from Lynx guard Courtney Williams that changed the momentum of Thursday night’s Game 1. She admitted that she didn’t think Laney-Hamilton was moving particularly well on Thursday night, which was the main reason she didn’t defend for that one possession. 

So what would that mean for one of the Liberty’s most versatile players if she was struggling to move? Reading the tea leaves from Brondello’s assessment of Laney-Hamilton, the prospect of her two-way productivity looked grim. Was she becoming a Liberty liability? 

A switch flipped 24 hours later following that practice. Laney-Hamilton was warming up on the court singing along to  Nicki Minaj’s “FTCU” prior to tipoff. She had a spring in her step and a confidence that she hadn’t had in close to a month. 

In the first quarter, Laney-Hamilton made all of her shots, one score from each level. She confidently took her midrange pull-up, then hit a three on a kick-out from Stewart on the right wing and scored at the rim after reading the defense and noticing that there was not a Lynx player protecting the rim. She made the right passes which included finding Stewart on the run, ball faking and then passing to Ionescu when she had an open driving lane and exploiting a Sabally mismatch deep in the paint. 

“We wanted to make sure she could play,” Brondello said postgame. “ … We need her to get confidence first, and then to go out and play.” 

It wasn’t just working offensively for Laney-Hamilton. She had her two-way moments too and was incredibly demonstrative when she made a defensive play. Even on something as simple as a kick ball that she and Stewart forced in the second quarter, Laney-Hamilton was smiling brightly and high-fiving Stewart as a result of their defensive disruption. 

Moments later on another Minnesota inbounds play, Laney-Hamilton followed Lynx guard Williams around while she dribbled the ball for the majority of the 14 second shot clock. Once Williams reversed the ball to Kayla McBride who then passed it to Bridget Carleton, Laney-Hamilton could see what was going to come next. She cut from Williams and ran right into Napheesa Collier’s driving lane. Laney-Hamilton shifted ever so slightly to take away Collier’s angle to the basket and, as a result, Collier turned the ball over. Once the official called that the ball had gone out of bounds, Laney-Hamilton jumped up and down and clapped her hands. 

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Laney-Hamilton’s vocal leadership throughout the game was noticeable. Whenever the Liberty came out of a timeout, she was one of the first to communicate with her teammates. She and Stewart were consistently leading huddles together. 

“I think what B and I were continuing to say in the huddles was defensively, the schemes — because they went small,” Stewart said postgame. “So it means our matchups are a little bit different. And making sure that we have each other’s help. If we are [on the] weak side, who is high, who is low.”

When Laney-Hamilton plays with this much confidence and joy in addition to the passion she typically brings night in and night out, the Liberty become a different team. But her teammates and Brondello continued to make it clear that this isn’t anything new for Laney-Hamilton but more of a return to form. 

She’s no stranger to hitting huge shots for this team, and that dates back to her first season in New York. Back when teams were playing single-elimination playoff games in 2021, Laney-Hamilton hit a game-tying trey with under five seconds left in regulation against a then Brondello-led Phoenix Mercury team. Don’t forget how Laney-Hamilton also willed the Liberty last season in their first round series against the Washington Mystics. 

Those heroics returned on Sunday afternoon with the Liberty only up two points with 3:29 remaining in the fourth quarter. Ionescu got the ball on the move and was met by two defenders. She dribbled out of it and fired a no-look pass to a wide open Laney-Hamilton in the right corner pocket. She caught it, shot it and drained it. The Liberty lead opened up to five points and that Laney-Hamilton trey began a Liberty 12-0 run to end the game. 

“I kind of baited [Lynx forward] Alanna Smith into thinking I was going to pass it high,” Ionescu said about that play postgame.  “And [Laney-Hamilton] hit a huge shot for us that changed the momentum of the game and continued to extend the lead. I think they called a timeout a little bit after that. It was huge for us.”

Ionescu continued: “We believe in her. She knows that. This was a huge game. She played a huge role in the game ending up the way that it did and she’s going to continue to do it for these next two games, we know that.”

That belief in Laney-Hamilton is omnipresent throughout the team. When Sabally was chatting with a group of reporters postgame, she made sure she praised Laney-Hamilton right before she too addressed a group of around 20 reporters. “She’s a dog,” Sabally said as Laney-Hamilton appeared in the scrum. “Everyone knows what she can do.” 

When it was Laney-Hamilton’s turn to chat, she was immediately asked about how emotional all of this was. When ESPN’s Holly Rowe asked her postgame how she was able to perform at this high level after everything she’s been through this season, tears came to her eyes. 

“Tears, you saw tears?” Laney-Hamilton said to reporters sarcastically. “I didn’t see any tears.” 

But after the dry humor, she opened up about how much this 20-point performance impacts her and her team when they both need it most. “It gives me a little bit of momentum as we continue to go through the series,” she said. “I mean, it felt really good. Because I know I’ve been struggling physically, mentally as I’ve been going through everything. So to see a glimpse of what I’m capable of, it felt really good.” 

The question remained. How was Laney-Hamilton able to come out and move with such ease after her head coach said that she wasn’t moving well during Game 1? When Rowe interviewed Laney-Hamilton in between the third and fourth quarters, she might have given the answer. 

“That shot finally kicked in,” Laney-Hamilton laughed. So did she get an injection? Laney-Hamilton didn’t deny it but also didn’t confirm it when asked by reporters. “The team, they’ve been doing a great job with everything,” she said. “We’ve been doing a little bit of everything to try and get me feeling good.”

So while it might have been a shot, extra massages and treatment that helped her with the physical hurdles, it was her teammates who mostly helped her with the mental challenges that playing through injury creates. Laney-Hamilton pointed pretty specifically to Thornton always being in her ear along with Jones checking in and encouraging her to continue shooting. Jones would ask Laney-Hamilton if she’s okay, what’s going on and how she was feeling. 

“And if she wants to talk, I just want to be available for her, and she’s the same thing, or the same way for me,” Jones said. “There’s times when I’ll call her in the back, just have a conversation with her and let her know how I’m feeling. And she picks me up and allows me to keep the main thing, the main thing, and refocus myself and not kind of worry about external things that’s going on or maybe things that I’m even overthinking. So it’s definitely a friendship, and I’m there for her, and she’s there for me.”

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Who’s there for Laney-Hamilton at a moment like this? It was the usual suspects in her mother Yolanda and her niece JJ. Both were in their typical spots in the Liberty’s family section on Sunday afternoon. When her daughter was being interviewed by ESPN postgame, Yolanda was locked in on the Jumbotron, lifting her head up to listen to what her daughter had to say on the biggest stage in women’s basketball. 

Once Laney-Hamilton finished with the broadcast, she made her way to her family and greeted her niece who was still behind the yellow cordon tape between the court and the crowd. Laney-Hamilton shimmied when she saw her niece and then took her hand to introduce her to all of the people who were dying to chat after the game she had. Laney-Hamilton and her niece made their way over to Jennifer Hudson to take pictures. And of course there were more hugs.