Breanna Stewart’s 45-point explosion shows the Liberty’s WNBA super-team potential

Stewart's record scoring and big assist totals from Sabrina Ionescu and Courtney Vandersloot produced a win to justify the hype around New York this season.

Breanna Stewart celebrates one of her six made three-pointers in the New York Liberty's win.Read moreElsa / Getty Images

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published May 21, 2023, 6:36 p.m. ET

NEW YORK — The pieces were all there Sunday afternoon: the bright lights, the cheering crowd, the flashy pregame hype video that ended with Sabrina Ionescu saying, “I hope you enjoy the show.”

There was even a pregame speech from the floor by new star Breanna Stewart where the Syracuse, N.Y., native told the crowd: “It’s nice to be home.”

But the Big Apple’s basketball fans didn’t come just to see the sizzle. They came to see big-time hoops, and they got what they wanted.

Stewart erupted for 16 first-quarter points on 6-of-7 shooting, including 4-of-5 from three-point range, and tallied 45 points and 12 rebounds to lead the Liberty to a 90-73 rout of the Indiana Fever.

It was a long way from the Liberty being on the other end of a rout two days before in Washington. Granted, the veteran-laden Mystics are a far better team than the young Fever, which have No. 1 draft pick Aliyah Boston but much work still to do.

Still, there was no doubt that this was the style of success that justifies the super-team hype around the Liberty.

Before tipoff, New York point guard Courtney Vandersloot — one of three big offseason acquisitions, along with Stewart and Jonquel Jones — admitted that not only did the team have little time together in training camp, but the players may have made things too complicated.

“We’re trying to be so unselfish that we’re passing up really good shots,” Vandersloot said. “That comes along with the learning curve. But we’ve all been playing this game for so long, and we have a good sense of what’s a good shot, and we trust in one another that we’re going to take the right shot.”

Liberty coach Sandy Brondello described Friday’s game as “a team that had chemistry and a team that didn’t.”

This time, things went better. New York recorded 28 assists to 17 turnovers, after an 18-to-20 ratio in D.C.

But when the biggest star of all seizes the show, there’s no doubt where the spotlight goes.

Stewart’s sixth made three of the day — and 15th made field goal overall — gave her the Liberty’s single-game scoring record before the third quarter was over. A cascade of “M-V-P!” chants erupted from a crowd of 8,575 that pretty well filled the Barclays Center’s lower bowl.

She ended up joining Maya Moore as the only players in WNBA history to hit 45-plus points, 10-plus rebounds and six-plus made threes in a game.

“I didn’t know I broke, really, any record,” Stewart said of her highest career scoring total as a pro or collegian at UConn. “I looked up at the scoreboard one time, and then I saw I had 37, and I was like — ‘I don’t even know what just happened.’”

Another cascade came down after the game, and drowned out much of a postgame interview that was broadcast on the big screen.

One key line came through loud and clear. In Stewart’s first Liberty home game after spending her first seven years as a pro in Seattle, she said: “It feels like I made the right decision.”

“I want people to be here, and I want people to come back.” Stewart said in her postgame news conference a few minutes later. “And I want more — I want more of everything. Yeah, it sounds selfish, but as a women’s basketball player, as a female athlete, we need to continue to get recognized for more, and in a lot of different ways: in media coverage, in fans, and eyes, and viewership.”

The highlights didn’t just come from Stewart, though obviously a lot of them did. Jones had 14 points, Vandersloot had 11 points and eight assists, and Ionescu had nine points, eight assists, eight rebounds, two steals, and a block.

Ionescu’s assist total was especially significant after she had just two against Washington, while shooting 7-for-20 from the field.

“We understand that we can score from all positions, everywhere on the floor,” she said. “When Stewie’s shooting like that, it opens up the floor for everyone … This is a standard now. We know that we’re capable of playing like this, and we’re holding ourselves to the standard every single night.”

If the Liberty can get balanced performances with all their stars, they might just finally win the team’s long-awaited first title.

“If I had 45 and we lost, then it would [stink],” Stewart said. “Moments like this, you just have to enjoy it.”

Then again …

“We have Breanna Stewart and they don’t, I suppose,” Brondello said. “That’s [what] it comes down to. … When Stewie started making all these shots, that’s greatness.”