CHICAGO — On Thursday evening, Chicago point guard Courtney Vandersloot was trying to explain the Sky’s defensive strategy when she looked at the box score in front of her.
“They scored 74 points,” she said of her former team, the New York Liberty. “Sorry, they scored 99. We scored 74. Yeah, that’s a lot of points.”
Yeah, that’s a lot of points.
It really was. The defending champion Liberty set a WNBA record with 19 3-pointers (in just 34 attempts) and shot 55.2 percent for the game in, yes, a 99-74 victory in the Sky’s home opener at Wintrust Arena.
Chicago did have a plan, Vandersloot said, but you know what Mike Tyson used to say about those.
“They obviously shot the ball really well,” she said. “That was not part of the game plan. But when the team gets hot like that, it makes it difficult.”
Natasha Cloud and Kennedy Burke led the Liberty with four 3-pointers apiece. Jonquel Jones added three, and Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Marine Johannes had two apiece. Cloud led everyone with 18 points and eight assists, while Burke added 17 off the bench. Neither Stewart (12 points) nor Ionescu (16) played in the fourth quarter, though I did spot Stewart singing along to a Backstreet Boys song during a timeout.
It was an “I Want It That Way” kind of…
