If you apply the quote living well is the best revenge, no team is living it better than the New York Liberty.
A year after being vanquished in four games by the Las Vegas Aces in the WNBA Finals, losing the deciding game by a point on their home floor, the Liberty spent a year ruminating on the defeat — and learning from it. Those lessons paid off Sunday night, as the Liberty beat the Minnesota Lynx on their home floor to secure the franchise’s first title.
“I’ve been manifesting this moment for a while. There’s no feeling like it,” Breanna Stewart said after Sunday’s 67-62 overtime win.
Rare is the chance in professional sports to make it all the way to the edge of a championship, fall short, then climb back and win on a second try. Across the big four pro leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) and the WNBA, a team like the Liberty, who lost the Finals, then came back and won the next year, has become what I’ll call one of those “Return Winners” just 59 times in total.
But rarer still is the “Revenge Winner,” a champion who not only bounces back from losing the previous season’s Finals, but who does it while going through the team that…
