Thursday\u2019s loss to the Mercury<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\nNor should New York be raising any alarms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Should it be disappointed? Sure, but not shaken.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The season is far too young, and the reigning champions have looked like the best team in the league for most of the first month of play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But this road trip is a fine time for the Liberty (10-2) to get back on track after dropping two of their last three games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That, or it could be the onslaught of more trouble.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Liberty are set open a 10-day, four-city road trip Sunday in Seattle against the Storm (8-5) before heading to the Bay Area to play the Valkyries (6-6) for the third time this season Wednesday. <\/p>\n
The trip concludes with the Mercury (10-4) on Friday and the Dream (9-4) on June 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sabrina Ionescu dribbles during the Liberty-Mercury game on June 19, 2025. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cA 10-day road trip is not easy no matter how you look at it,\u201d Sabrina Ionescu said. \u201cPlaying four games, four different cities, traveling, not really getting complacent \u2014 obviously, any time you have that many road games, it\u2019s tough. You never get to come back home and recalibrate. And use your fans to kind of help you and you have to find your energy in an opposing team\u2019s arena. So it\u2019s not going to be easy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Liberty have dealt with some personnel and lineup changes because of injuries and an overseas commitment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nyara Sabally missed six of the first eight games with a knee issue, and Jonquel Jones already has had a few physical setbacks this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After missing two games with a sprained right ankle, Jones aggravated that injury in the first half of Thursday\u2019s loss and will miss four to six weeks. She also missed a game with an overextended hamstring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Liberty also are without Leonie Fiebich for the foreseeable future because she\u2019s overseas for EuroBasket.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These hardships affect every team at various points of the season. The best ones, though, are able to find solutions with the players they have.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Natasha Cloud looks on during the Liberty-Mercury game on June 19, 2025. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen adversity hits, your purpose is really challenged and we know where we want to be at the end of the season,\u201d Natasha Cloud said. \u201cAnd so we\u2019re going to go through these growing pains early. You never want to peak too early.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the most concerning trends about the Liberty early this season is that they have a tendency at times to play with their food.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their sense of urgency drops, the offense gets clunky and the defense gets sloppy, and opponents take advantage of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCovering the Liberty like never before\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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The Liberty have gone 2-2 in games when they\u2019ve trailed by 10 or more points in the second half.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once things are unglued, it can be hard to get the team back on the same page, especially on defense.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And for a team like the Liberty, who use their defense to fuel their offense, it can create big problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to have better awareness of what we\u2019re doing and why on the court,\u201d Breanna Stewart said Saturday. \u201c[Seattle] is a pretty good test for us. We\u2019re not always going to have every player. We\u2019re not always gonna be perfect. But how are we going to respond throughout that and still put ourselves in the best chance to win?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Breanna Stewart dribbles during the Liberty-Mercury game on June 19, 2025. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
If the Liberty aren\u2019t careful, things could unravel. But five weeks into the season, they haven\u2019t given us a reason to believe that could happen \u2014 at least not yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cloud said the team is going to channel that \u201croad warriors\u201d mentality that helped the Liberty win their first four road games of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to keep chipping away and making sure that we\u2019re getting better,\u201d Cloud said. \u201cAnd yeah, I just want to get some wins on this road trip.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 The Liberty aren\u2019t panicking.\u00a0 They made that abundantly clear after Thursday\u2019s loss to the Mercury.\u00a0 Nor…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1520,62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-3695","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-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114724063347839185","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695","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=3695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}