Playing for the first time this season without All-Star guard Sabrina Ionescu slowed down the rolling Liberty, and with her absence came a nightmarish offensive game for Breanna Stewart that proved to be too much to overcome.
Ionescu had scored a career-high 37 points last week in a 23-point victory in Atlanta, but she sat out Tuesday’s 86-79 loss to the same Dream team at Barclays Center due to a hamstring issue.
The Liberty were unable to survive a rough shooting night by Stewart and couldn’t climb all the way back from a self-inflicted, 11-point fourth-quarter deficit.
Stewart, who ranks second to Seattle Storm guard Jewell Loyd in the early WNBA scoring race at 24.9 points per game, finished with 12 points, 13 rebounds and six assists, but she missed 13 of 14 field-goal attempts, netting 10 of her dozen points from the free-throw line.
“Obviously, without Sabrina, they put a lot of attention on Stewie, but we just have to put her in better spots and get her more open looks,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said. “We’ll let this sting and then get back to work.
“It sucks that we lost, we didn’t have the appropriate effort for 40 minutes.”
Betnijah Laney scored 17 and point guard Courtney Vandersloot added 11 with six assists as the Liberty (6-3) slipped to 1 ¹/₂ games behind first-place Connecticut in the East.
Marine Johannes made her first start of the season in place of Ionescu and scored 16 points in 33 minutes, while Allisha Gray led the Dream (3-5) with 16 points.
“We have to find a way to play better around Stewie and help her,” Johannes said.
Ionescu scored 19 of her 22 points in the second half of Sunday’s win over Dallas, but the fourth-year guard and former NCAA Player of the Year showed up on the injury report with a left hamstring issue Monday before being downgraded to doubtful then ruled out for Tuesday.
“It’s in the other leg, [too], so we’re just being precautionary. She had it in one leg, and then it usually happens to the other leg,” Brondello said, noting that the team doesn’t play again until Sunday at home against Phoenix. “She hasn’t got an injury per se. … But we’ll give her a few days off, and hopefully that’ll do the trick.”
The Liberty had registered 100-point efforts in each of their previous two games, but without Ionescu, who is averaging 16.5 points per game, they got off to a slow start and didn’t come close to posting triple figures for a third straight game.
The Dream grabbed a 24-20 lead through one quarter, with Stewart shut out on five straight misses from the floor. But the former league MVP notched eight points in the second, including 6-of-6 from the free-throw line, for a 46-41 Liberty edge at halftime.
They upped the cushion to seven early in the third, but they couldn’t shake the Dream, who pulled even at 60-60 entering the final quarter on Haley Jones’ 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Jones’ traditional three-point play, a put-back by Cheyenne Parker and a layup by Gray keyed a 14-3 Atlanta run to open the fourth and put the Liberty down by 11 with 5:38 remaining.
A transition trey by Johannes and Stewart’s ninth and 10th converted free throws shaved the deficit to four, and two free throws by Laney drew the Liberty within 80-77 with 1:19 to go. But two free throws by Gray pushed the margin back to five with 42.2 seconds remaining.
“Offensive rebounds and turnovers, I thought that was an Achilles’ heel for us tonight,” Brondello said. “Credit to Atlanta, they wanted it more. Sixteen second-chance points, that’s something we have to get better at.”