NEW YORK — Sabrina Ionescu’s final pass of the New York Liberty’s 91-82 Game 2 victory over the Atlanta Dream was to no one in particular. In fact, it was less of a chest pass, and more of a celebratory spike — an emphatic bounce of the basketball around midcourt after a 36-point, nine-assist masterclass that lifted the top-seeded Liberty into the WNBA semifinals.
Ionescu opened Tuesday’s scoring with a 3-pointer on New York’s first possession and sealed the victory with the series’ final pair of free throws. She did plenty in between after saying the Liberty had no intentions of traveling south for a deciding Game 3.
“We don’t want to go to Atlanta,” Ionescu said Tuesday morning. “That’s not something we want to do.”
It took New York outscoring Atlanta 26-18 in the fourth quarter to prevail and sweep the Dream 2-0. Ionescu expected Tuesday’s contest to be tougher than Sunday’s Game 1, in which the Liberty never trailed and cruised to a 14-point win. Her prediction proved correct, as the Dream played with a renewed sense of urgency.
“We got to throw some punches from the very very beginning and let them know that it’s gonna be a dog fight,” Atlanta coach Tanisha Wright said Tuesday morning.
Dream All-Star guard Allisha Gray made her first…
