without Breanna Stewart<\/a>, Kennedy Burke and Nyara Sabally, but Meesseman believes the team\u2019s biggest issues have nothing to do with their absences.<\/p>\n\u201cJust the discipline, attention to detail, like I just said passing \u2014 pass to the open side, or cut with purpose, play with purpose, stick to plays, pay attention in timeouts, I feel like it\u2019s just that,\u201d Meesseman said. \u201cNo matter who we have on the court, no matter what level, players [or] what league, it\u2019s all about hustle. I don\u2019t think you can practice that. So we just have to go out there and fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minnesota Lynx forward Alanna Smith (8) reaches for the ball past New York Liberty forward Emma Meesseman (33) during the first half of a game at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2025. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post<\/p>\n
Meesseman, 32, knows what she\u2019s talking about. Widely considered one of the best Europeans in the game and a WNBA champion in 2019, she\u2019s also been part of a different team that, by all accounts, could have won a WNBA title but didn\u2019t. Meesseman played for the Sky in 2022 during their title defense that ended with a shocking semifinal exit.<\/p>\n
Only four games in with the Liberty, Meesseman is still finding her footing with the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still new to the team, so I\u2019m kind of still looking from the side [at] really, how is everybody reacting? What does everybody need individually?\u201d Meesseman said. \u201cBut I think I have a lot of experience in different cases like losses, wins, championships, lost championships \u2026 so just trying to be a good teammate for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
New York Liberty center Emma Meesseman (33) and guard Marine Johannes (23) and guard Natasha Cloud (9) and forward Leonie Fiebich (13) gather in a huddle during the second half against the Dallas Wings at College Park Center. Jerome Miron-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
The Liberty are 20-11 and tied with the Dream for second in the league standings, with both teams sitting 6 \u00bd games behind league-leading Minnesota.<\/p>\n
With 13 games left, including Tuesday night in Los Angeles, the gap between a first and second seed in the playoffs now may be too large to overcome.<\/p>\n
The Liberty are far more concerned about getting to the playoffs with a clean bill of health than playoff seeding.<\/p>\n
New York Liberty center Emma Meesseman (33) looks to move the ball past Dallas Wings center Luisa Geiselsoder (18) during the second half at College Park Center. Jerome Miron-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Could the team\u2019s forward outlook on the playoffs be actually hurting it? The Liberty have been burned several times for their passive play, including during a disastrous third quarter in Dallas last week.<\/p>\n
The Liberty made a point Sunday to have a better start to the second half. They wanted to punch first and knock the Lynx off balance. At the start of the third, that\u2019s what the Liberty did.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCovering the Liberty like never before\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Madeline Kenney’s Inside the Liberty, a weekly Sports+ newsletter.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
But the Lynx countered with a run of their own while the Liberty downshifted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started it [well] but we just didn\u2019t finish it,\u201d Meesseman said. \u201cAgain, I think that\u2019s more on us than on Minnesota forcing us.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just kind of \u2026 in this league, in this game, nothing is going to go by itself. You have to keep forcing it and demand from each other that you have to play hard and discipline. And we were just giving bad passes and not being disciplined in that part, so yeah, we have some work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Meesseman has been with the Liberty for not even two weeks. That didn\u2019t stop her from calling…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":139439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1520,13726,62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-139438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-new-york-liberty","9":"tag-ny-sports-minute","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115015350084214325","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}