At its best, the Liberty offense can near the century mark with ease. That’s the perk of assembling a superteam and running it back again one year later. There’s pace. There’s efficiency.
But then there are nights like Monday.
When they scored nine points in the second quarter. When they hit one 3-pointer in the first half. The Liberty produced their fewest points in a regular-season game since scoring 64 in the 2023 opener.
Against the Seattle Storm, who were missing star Nneka Ogwumike, that was still enough for a 74-63 win at Barclays Center to secure their first 4-0 start since 2007.
Sabrina Ionescu led the Liberty with 20 points and eight assists, while Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones added 16 each.
“They were tired, we were tired — four games in seven days to start the season,” head coach Sandy Brondello said. “I’m happy with our defense, because we found a way to win ugly.”
The Liberty were saved by the Storm (1-3) shooting 34 percent from the field.
Seattle, at this juncture of the season, is still adjusting.
The Storm assembled their own version of a quasi-superteam this offseason with Skylar Diggins-Smith and Ogwumike joining Jewell Loyd, though in the moment, early-season adjustments have translated to inconsistent performances — against the Liberty, and without Ogwumike, they turned the ball over 17 times.
But two days after hitting 12 3-pointers in the first half, the Liberty hit just one across the opening 20 minutes Monday.
They only connected on three for the game.
In the second quarter, their offense disappeared — the Liberty didn’t score until Jones’ basket with 6:01 remaining. It was the type of disastrous stretch that would normally lead to a deficit instead of, somehow, a 12-point halftime advantage.
“The ball was kind of getting stuck a lot,” Stewart said. “We weren’t able to kind of flow through anything or move it to multiple sides.”
For the most part, those struggles carried over into the second half.
The Liberty finished the night shooting 41 percent. But Brondello said they prevented that brutal second quarter from spiraling into something worse.
“In the past, we might’ve just crumbled a little bit and gave up 30 points,” she said.
“We just were looking for a touchdown pass on the first action,” Brondello said, “and we became too individual — and that’s not how we need to play, how we have the most success. … It got pretty ugly out there.”
The Liberty eventually found some rhythm and built a 15-point lead by the start of the fourth.
The Storm, on two occasions, trimmed their deficit to single digits in the final frame.
By the time the buzzer sounded, the Liberty had unveiled a different type of formula that ended with a win — though it was far from a sustainable blueprint.
Nights like Monday will likely end up being more of an anomaly. But still, amid the slog, they found a way to keep their undefeated mark intact for one more game.
