Sabrina Ionescu secures Liberty Game 3 win vs. Lynx in WNBA Finals

MINNEAPOLIS —  Sabrina Ionescu had to watch video in the locker room of her winning 3-pointer Wednesday night to know just how long it was. But she said that as soon as she launched it, she thought, “Yeah, this is in.”

Ionescu’s 28-foot dagger that swished with 1 second left — “definitely the biggest shot of my career” — gave the New York Liberty an 80-77 come-from-behind win over the Minnesota Lynx in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals. The Liberty are now one victory away from their first league title in franchise history.

“I would say I visualize a lot when I’m practicing in the offseason, the night before a game, the day of a game,” Ionescu said. “I’m always visualizing different scenarios and putting myself in tough situations. Obviously, I didn’t play my best tonight, but finding a way to continue to stick with it … I feel like that’s been a big growth for me, whether the ball is going in or not.”

This one went in, the 10th 3-pointer of the game for the Liberty. Ionescu’s shot left the Lynx’s record crowd of 19,521 stunned, much like Minnesota did to the New York crowd in Game 1, a 95-93 Lynx win in overtime.

The Liberty lost an 18-point lead in that game; the Lynx lost a 15-point edge Wednesday. In both cases, there were dramatic momentum shifts and huge plays in the kind of heavyweight matchup expected when the top two seeds play for a championship.

“The hardest thing to do when we’re in a series … is there’s so many ups and downs and swings,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said, “and it takes special mental toughness and physical toughness to weather those swings. We’re disappointed — we’re home, we played well and just couldn’t come up with the win.

“We have to dust ourselves off and get another crack at it here at home. We’ll see what we can do on Friday.”

The teams will return to Target Center with the Lynx trying to send the series back to New York for a deciding Game 5 on Sunday. Minnesota has an uphill battle, but it has been done before. Four other teams have won the WNBA title after being down 2-1 in the Finals, including the Lynx in 2017.

The Liberty want to end the series Friday. They are one of three original WNBA teams still in the city where they started; the other two, the Los Angeles Sparks and Phoenix Mercury, each have won three titles.

New York has played for the championship five times before this year. One of the most dramatic of those series losses was in 1999, when the Liberty won Game 2 of what was then a best-of-three series at Houston on Teresa Weatherspoon’s shot at the buzzer from beyond half court, only to lose the next day to the Comets.

Weatherspoon’s shot, often cited as the most famous in league history, is one of four times that a WNBA player has made a winning 3-pointer in the last 5 seconds of a Finals game. The others were Minnesota’s Maya Moore in Game 3 in 2015 against  Indiana, and Los Angeles’ Nikki Teasley in Game 2 in 2002 against New York.

Teasley’s shot won that series in what was then still a best-of-three Finals. Moore and Minnesota lost Game 4 of the 2015 Finals, but then won Game 5 and the title.

So Ionescu is the fourth player to pull off this feat, and it came in a game that was eerily similar to New York’s victory when Weatherspoon made her shot 25 years ago. The Liberty led for just 2 minutes, 19 seconds Wednesday, the second-shortest amount of time leading in a Finals win in WNBA history.

The shortest time to lead in a Finals win? You guessed it: Game 2 of the 1999 Finals, when the Liberty led the Comets for just 2:15 before Weatherspoon’s buzzer-beater.

Trying to win a long-awaited championship for New York has been on Ionescu’s mind since she was drafted No. 1 in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that cancelled the NCAA tournament her senior season at  Oregon.

Ionescu then suffered a season-ending ankle injury in her third Liberty game. She left the WNBA’s COVID-19 bubble in Bradenton, Florida, and went home to California to rehab. Ionescu said she couldn’t bring herself to watch many Liberty games on television the rest of that season, as the team finished 2-20.

Then, before the 2023 season, she was joined by free agents  Breanna Stewart and Courtney Vandersloot, and Jonquel Jones, who arrived via trade. Those players and Ionescu helped form the core of the team that is playing in its second consecutive WNBA Finals.

The Liberty lost 3-1 to the Las Vegas Aces last season, but the players said they learned a lot about themselves in the process. This season, New York had the best record in the regular season (32-8) and is the No. 1 seed.

The Liberty didn’t look like it in the first quarter Wednesday. Contrary to fast starts in the first two games of the Finals, the Liberty trailed 28-18 after the first quarter. They cut the deficit to 43-35 by halftime.

In the third quarter, though, Stewart took over, scoring 14 points and bringing New York to within 62-61. The Lynx defense was hampered somewhat by forward Alanna Smith dealing with a back injury she suffered in the second quarter. She still played nearly 20 minutes but was clearly in pain.

Stewart previously won WNBA titles in 2018 and 2020 with the team that drafted her No. 1 in 2016, the Seattle Storm. Now playing for the team in her home state of New York, Stewart had a tough finish to Game 1 when she missed a free throw at the end of regulation and a layup at the end of overtime.

Since then, though, Stewart has come back strong. Along with her game-high 30 points Wednesday, she had 11 rebounds and 4 blocks.

“We don’t win this game without Stewie,” Ionescu said.

Ionescu, Jones and Leonie Fiebich each finished with 13 points.

Ionescu was named to the All-WNBA second team earlier Wednesday; some thought she should have been on the first team.

“That was just a great All-WNBA second-team performance,” Ionescu joked after the game.

New York coach Sandy Brondello said even if Ionescu was 4-of-11 from the field before the winning shot, she never doubted for a minute she should take it.

“Obviously, Stewie got us back in there, willed us in there,” Brondello said. “But I thought, ‘[At] the right time, this is Sabrina.’ She’s a great shooter.

“What I love about her is that she backs herself. Not everyone can take those big shots and make them. She can.”

ESPN Research contributed to this report.