PHOENIX \u2014 Alyssa Thomas had a 20 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in her fifth career playoff triple-double, and the Phoenix Mercury advanced to the second round of the WNBA playoffs by eliminating the defending champion New York Liberty 79-73 in Game 3 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Satou Sabally added 23 points and 12 rebounds for the fourth-seeded Mercury, who play at top-seeded Minnesota on Sunday to start the best-of-five semifinal round.<\/p>\n
Thomas has five of the seven WNBA playoff triple-doubles. <\/p>\n
Sami Whitcomb scored 13 points and Kahleah Copper had 12 points and nine rebounds for the Mercury, who had a 49-33 advantage on the boards. DeWanna Bonner had eight rebounds to pass Candace Parker for the most boards in playoff history with 614.<\/p>\n
Breanna Stewart, five days after spraining the MCL in her left knee in overtime of a Game 1 win, scored 30 points, including the last 14 in the fourth quarter for the Liberty. Sabrina Ionescu added 22 but the rest of the Liberty struggled.<\/p>\n
There were five ties and 13 lead changes through three quarters, which ended with Phoenix on top 60-59, but New York never led in the fourth. <\/p>\n
Stewart’s three-point play had the Liberty within 65-64 with 6:51 to play. But Thomas had a basket, two assists and a rebound to get her ninth triple-double of this season, as the Mercury surged ahead 72-64 with 5:36 to play. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Phoenix Mercury forward Satou Sabally, center, tries to pass between New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, left, and forward Kennedy Burke during the first half of Game 3 in the first round of the WNBA basketball playoffs, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, in Phoenix. Credit: AP\/Rick Scuteri<\/p>\n
Stewart made two free throws \u2014 she was 12 of 15 from the line \u2014 to make it 76-73 with 1:10 to play. The Liberty had a turnover and three misses in the last minute and finished 7 of 32 from 3-point range, including 1 for 17 in the second half.<\/p>\n
The Mercury led by 12 in the second quarter but with Ionescu scoring 12 points the Liberty cut it to 45-41 at halftime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Alyssa Thomas had a 20 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in her fifth career playoff…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":240541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1520,1502,62,67,132,68,10190,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-240540","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-phoenix-mercury","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-wires-bot","15":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115234599368639694","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240540","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=240540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}