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WNBA award voting ballot<\/p>\n
USA TODAY’s Meghan Hall shares who she voted for in the 2025 WNBA awards in the top 6 major categories.<\/p>\n
Sports Seriously<\/p>\n
The season is on the line once again for the Phoenix Mercury.<\/p>\n
But now, there\u2019s even more confidence from the team as it hosts the New York Liberty in Game 3 of the first-round WNBA playoff series on Friday, Sept. 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mercury embraced the underdog role heading into New York for the elimination game on Sept. 17 and earned their largest road win when facing elimination in team history. \u00a0<\/p>\n
It was also the team\u2019s first playoff win since the 2021 WNBA Finals, when current Liberty coach Sandy Brondello was with the Mercury.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What changed for the Mercury against the Liberty? Forward Satou Sabally surpassed her high expectations and delivered with 15 points, seven rebounds and four steals. Sabally scored 10 points in the decisive second quarter and played a big role defensively as well. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Sabally erased her worst shooting performance of the season in the Game 1 loss, where she went 2 of 17 from the field and 1 of 10 from 3 at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s really important not to focus on headlines that focus on negativity,\u201d Sabally said. \u201cI’m a great player and I know that that game (Game 1) was not who I am.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sabally, along with Alyssa Thomas and Kahleah Copper, set the tone early in Game 2 and got their teammates involved on both ends. Thomas had 15 points, seven assists and six rebounds, while Copper added 14 points and one block. The Mercury are 14-0 this season when their Big 3 score 10 or more points each.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Big 3\u2019s efforts led to five players scoring in double figures, which is when the Mercury are at their best. The Mercury went 13-0 in the regular season when at least five players scored in double figures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s a series for a reason,” Thomas\u00a0said. “We were disappointed in the way that we shot in the first game. We knew (Game 2) was going to be a different day. We were just going to come out there for 40 minutes and give them everything we had.”<\/p>\n
What fueled their offense was the smothering defense, which led to scoring in transition. The Liberty were held to 60 points, their second-lowest total of the season and worst home loss in playoff history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mercury\u2019s turnaround began after the first quarter, going from surrendering 10 field goals in the first quarter to nine the rest of the game. New York shot a season-low 30.2% from the field, 23.1% from the 3-point line and 16 of 25 from the free-throw line.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just Thomas and Monique Akoa Makani leading the way defensively. Sami Whitcomb and DeWanna Bonner provided energy off the bench with five combined steals and eight defensive rebounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Given what the Mercury were able to do against the Liberty, New York will come back with a vengeance in Game 3. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“We can’t go out and play the same way we did and expect a different result,” Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu said. “We have to go out and make the adjustments and play like our season is on the line, because it is.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ionescu struggled in Game 2, going 3 of 13 from the field and 1 of 8 from the 3-point line. She had an uncharacteristic day at the free-throw line, shooting 2 of 6. \u00a0<\/p>\n
But Ionescu wasn\u2019t the only Liberty player to underperform. Forward Breanna Stewart played with an MCL sprain in her left knee and received electro currents on it throughout the game to manage her pain. She finished with six points off 2 of 6 shooting in 20 minutes. Her status for Game 3 is still unclear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Game 3 will be on Friday, Sept. 19, in Phoenix at the PHX\u00a0Arena at 6 p.m. MT on ESPN2. The winner will meet the Minnesota Lynx in the semifinals beginning on Sunday, Sept. 21.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNBA award voting ballot USA TODAY’s Meghan Hall shares who she voted for in the 2025 WNBA awards…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":237377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[4545,4552,5229,5643,1587,1339,57445,5336,26817,57447,66884,20022,4548,160,942,635,405,1520,50,5228,450,950,1589,1502,66883,57446,15534,66882,20021,62,1458,29833,4546,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,232,2869,1707,636],"class_list":{"0":"post-237376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-alyssa","9":"tag-alyssa-thomas","10":"tag-america","11":"tag-arizona","12":"tag-az","13":"tag-basketball","14":"tag-breanna","15":"tag-breanna-stewart","16":"tag-copper","17":"tag-ionescu","18":"tag-kahleah","19":"tag-kahleah-copper","20":"tag-liberty","21":"tag-mercury","22":"tag-neutral","23":"tag-new","24":"tag-new-york","25":"tag-new-york-liberty","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-ny","28":"tag-overall","29":"tag-overall-neutral","30":"tag-phoenix","31":"tag-phoenix-mercury","32":"tag-sabally","33":"tag-sabrina","34":"tag-sabrina-ionescu","35":"tag-satou","36":"tag-satou-sabally","37":"tag-sports","38":"tag-sports-news","39":"tag-stewart","40":"tag-thomas","41":"tag-united-states","42":"tag-united-states-of-america","43":"tag-unitedstates","44":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","45":"tag-us","46":"tag-usa","47":"tag-wnba","48":"tag-womens","49":"tag-womens-sports","50":"tag-york"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237376","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=237376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}