LAS VEGAS — The good news for the New York Liberty after Wednesday night’s Game 2 shellacking at the hands of the Las Vegas Aces is that they boarded a charter airplane to fly back East less than two hours after the final buzzer sounded.
If that’s the good news, then what’s the bad news?
Well … just about everything else.
As New York traveled a week ago to Las Vegas optimistic about its chances of winning on the Aces’ home floor for the start of the WNBA Finals, the majority of players slept while airborne. On their red-eye home, any dreams might be nightmares as they face a series elimination game Sunday in a 2-0 hole. The image of twirling white “Raise the Stakes” towels and the roars of “Let’s go, Aces” chants were sure to be interspersed with memories of defensive blow-bys and 3-pointers rattling out on the other end of the floor.
The Aces scored a WNBA Finals record of 38 points in the first quarter of Game 2 — a period which New York guard Sabrina Ionescu compared to a “clinic” — en route to a 104-76 win. New York sliced the margin to eight at halftime, but the second half of Wednesday’s contest looked much like the series opener, which Las Vegas won 99-82.
Why did the New York team that took the floor in Las Vegas look so different from the…
