We witnessed the Liberty having their Sunday brunch, care of WNBA scheduling.
Las Vegas had tipped off in Minnesota on Saturday afternoon. New York tipped at 12:30 Sunday. That’s 23½ hours between scheduled starts, plus a flight from Minneapolis to New York. A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young had played 33, 36 and 33 minutes the day before. Becky Hammon gave all three the afternoon off at Barclays. The Aces were also completing a five-game, nine-day road trip. Sometimes the schedule hands you brunch.
It was Legends Weekend, and upon our early arrival a youth game was underway, with DJ Ria somehow doing color, play-by-play and refereeing all at once. The vibes were ’90s and the Liberty were in their Court Origins uniforms (their 2026 reworking of the 1997 debut look). Maddie the dog was there, too: the old MSG dog, a hyped-up, sponge-textured friend with a springy tail. Then Maddie went bouncing across the center-court LIBERTY, reviving an old Garden tradition. It’s old school and confusing… particularly in Ellie’s absence.
We loved seeing Liberty veterans from the Garden years in the Brooklyn home. Their recognition needed some polish. The in-arena legends roll call on the center-hung scoreboard got the names wrong. The legends and the crowd noticed. It was mortifying and, on a weekend built around honoring them, they deserved better.
As basketball, the Liberty’s 111-71 win was thrilling. New York led 24-15 after one, 50-39 at halftime and 74-51 after three, then let an all-bench group drop 34 points in the fourth quarter (Rebecca Allen score 3 more, for 37 points in the last quarter). The 40-point margin was the third-largest victory in franchise history and the largest the Liberty have ever hung on the Aces. The bench scored 58, also the third-highest total in franchise history.
To start: Jonquel Jones was all muscle (and a little brute force, going 3-for-6 from three). She finished with 15 points and eight boards in 19 minutes. Breanna Stewart put up 14 points, four rebounds and four assists in 23. Sabrina Ionescu took no prisoners in disposition but her jumper was off, shooting five points on 2-for-10.
The starters raised the bar. The bench were out to prove something. The Liberty shot 53.3 percent from the floor, 43.8 percent from three and outrebounded Vegas 45-24. Johannès finished with a career-high 27 points in 22 minutes, going 9-for-14 from the field and 7-for-12 from three. Twelve of those points came in the fourth quarter. Han Xu had 14 points and five rebounds in 17:28 minutes (and a block). Rebekah Gardner had 11 and seven. Marine Fauthoux handed out nine assists in 22 minutes. By then some Liberty fans had begun politely applauding the Aces’ better attempts, either in appreciation of basketball or mercy.
For the Aces, Hammon got a fitting pop as a Liberty legend herself. And the Aces gave Barclays something to watch. Ta’Niya Latson scored 20 in 24 minutes. Justine Pissott had 11. Most impressive to us was 5-foot-5 guard Mai Yamamoto, who came off the bench for 16 points, six assists and four threes in 26 minutes. However, the score really says it all.
In the midst of all this, it’s necessary to mention that were murmurings near the end of the first quarter:
Where was Ellie?
Ellie was nowhere to be found in the first, her usual crowd work and twerking mischief conspicuously absent, the floor instead belonging to an enthusiastic Maddie of old. For a mascot whose defining characteristic is making herself impossible to ignore, Ellie’s absence was strange. Eventually she emerged, quietly and gracefully, among the Legends.
Then, during Monifah’s halftime performance, there she was: Ellie in a T-Spoon jersey, Maddie in a Lobo jersey. The generational interaction between mascots had its charms and its awkwardness. In the Big Ellie number, the handstand-split-and-clap was a little lopsided, but the whole performance felt especially energetic.
That was the afternoon, really: old and new, stars and reserves, Maddie and Ellie, a little awkward and extremely lopsided, and more entertaining than a 40-point game had any right to be.
