Few players know the grind of a season quite like Breanna Stewart.
The star athlete has been a constant presence on the court, sitting out just a single game this year.
She’s not just playing; she’s excelling, consistently ranking among the top in the league for minutes per game.
Yet, even seasoned professionals can be caught off guard. When reminded of the Liberty’s recent 10-game slump, where they lost eight matches, the two-time MVP expressed genuine surprise, as if the news were breaking for the first time.
“Dang,” Stewart remarked with surprise following Wednesday’s victory over Seattle. “2-8? Wow.”
It was easy to forget after the Liberty (19-13) won for the sixth time in seven games, while setting a franchise record by scoring at least 90 points for the seventh straight game.
of the Storm on Aug. 5. Michelle Farsi/New York Post
But the Liberty are still not playing to the potential of the preseason title favorite, recovering from its mid-season tailspin after facing five sub-.500 teams — including the past two games at home against the league-worst Storm — in its past six games.
Despite the soft schedule, the Liberty’s past six wins have come by an average of less than five points per game.
Monday’s win against Seattle (6-27) is the Liberty’s only double-digit win since July 3 and its only wire-to-wire victory since May 29.
“I think what we’ve been talking about is just embracing where we are as a team,” Jonquel Jones said. “I think at the beginning of the season we were so used to being that team that would come out, blow people out, have a certain type of win, that I think sometimes it would cost us — not to have a negative vibe, but the expectations of, ‘Wow, we should be up by more.’ So there were times that we would even be winning and it would kind of feel like we were down because we had such a high level of expectation for ourselves.
“Right now, it’s about us embracing it. We’ve been on the other side and there’ve been close games that we lost, so right now we’re taking the ‘W’s, we’re gonna learn from it, we’re gonna continue to get better.”
They must, if they are to make a run at their second title in the past three years.
The Liberty — who host the defending champion Aces (22-9) on Sunday, then travel to Indiana (19-12) — have the league’s third-hardest remaining strength of schedule (.535 opponents’ winning percentage) and are 1-4 in their past five games against winning teams.
The Liberty — who suffered its most recent loss at Las Vegas on July 30 — entered Friday in seventh-place, but could still secure home-court advantage in the first round, with just 1.5 games separating the current No. 4 seed from the No. 8 seed.
The Liberty may need to climb higher, though, to contend for another championship.
The franchise won its only title as a No. 1 seed in 2024.
The previous year, the Liberty reached the WNBA Finals as a No. 2 seed.
Since Stewart and Jones’ arrival to New York, the Liberty are 5-0 as the higher-seed in the postseason, but 0-2 as the lower-seed, including last year’s first-round exit to Phoenix.
And there has only been one champion in league history that wasn’t a top-two seed.
“It’s just understanding we’ve been put in so many situations when we’re down and digging ourselves out of a hole,” Sabrina Ionescu said this week. “They’re all just experiences that we’re able to have in the regular season that should set us up for the postseason.”