Sabrina Ionescu thrust her hands into the air, threw her head back and screamed. As the buzzer sounded on her team’s 98-91 upset of the defending champion Chicago Sky in Game 1 of the first round, Ionescu was flooded with emotion.

Happiness, relief, exhaustion and pride. The Liberty guard felt it all after the franchise’s first playoff win since 2015.

“We came here and did what we needed to do, and what nobody believed we could do,” she said.

The Liberty still have to win one more game to take the best-of-three series and move onto the semifinals, but the win on Wednesday proved something the Liberty have long known: It’s possible.

“I’ve been saying to this team, ‘Why not us?’ I know we had a 20 percent chance of even making it to the playoffs, and here we are,” Ionescu said. “We believe in ourselves and that’s all that matters. We are going to try and get another one.”

The win wasn’t a fluke. The Liberty know that. The Sky know, too. And they both know that New York, as the No. 7 seed, needs just one more win to advance and send last year’s title winner home.

If you don’t believe Ionescu’s sentiment of “why not” the Liberty, then allow me to present the evidence.

Previous matchups

There’s precedent for the Liberty playing the Sky close. They matched up four times in the regular season, and aside from a lopsided 83-50 Chicago win in the second game of the season, every contest has been tight.

New York lost by two, 88-86, on June 12, when Ionescu recorded her first triple-double of the season with 27 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists.

The Liberty secured their first win over the Sky on July 23, when Ionescu completed a 3-point play with 9.7 seconds left, ending a six-game winning streak by Chicago.

And in their most recent matchup on July 29, the Sky secured an eight-point win despite the Liberty keeping it close with double-figure scoring from Ionescu, Natasha Howard, Stefanie Dolson and Marine Johannès.

Each time they’ve played the Sky, the Liberty have gained confidence. Each one of those matchups further proved the mindset that New York has what it takes to play with Chicago.

Personnel

When you look at the Liberty’s roster makeup, it’s hard to believe this team went into the playoffs with a 16-20 record. They have one of the deepest teams in the league, with top-to-bottom talent.

That starts with Ionescu and her 17.4 points, 7.1 rebounds and 6.3 assists per game, but it certainly doesn’t end there. Howard is a two-time All-Star who averages 15.1 points per game, but more importantly, she’s a veteran who’s been a part of three WNBA championship teams. She knows how to win in the postseason and demonstrated that in a big way Wednesday with 22 points, seven boards and three assists. Howard also played 34 minutes, the most after Ionescu.

Dolson, who was a part of Chicago’s championship-winning team last year, contributed 13 points and seven rebounds in Wednesday’s win. She was crucial to the Liberty’s offense, making three 3-pointers, and as a 6-foot-5 center, her shooting ability stretches the defense and creates more openings for her teammates.

👀 did you see that ?
MJ’s over the back dish to Flash!#Ownthecrown pic.twitter.com/F1FTHLv6VX

— New York Liberty (@nyliberty) August 18, 2022

But the two pieces that are the most important to New York’s potential playoff success are Betnijah Laney and Johannès.

Laney was dominant last season for New York, averaging 16.8 points per game and earning her first All-Star bid. She missed significant time this year with a knee injury that required surgery. Wednesday’s win was only her fifth game back for the Liberty, but she looked to be at the top of her game, recording 17 points, five rebounds and five assists. With 1:23 left on the clock, Laney hit a step-back jumper to give her team a five-point advantage. She then made two free throws with 38.9 seconds remaining for the 98-91 lead that ended up being the final score. Her return was crucial to the Liberty winning their last three games to even get to the playoffs, and she remains a key piece in their quest to upset the Sky.

Johannès, meanwhile, has been making a splash with her flashy style since she joined the team on June 6. But her flair shouldn’t be confused with gaudiness. The guard is creative, but everything she does has purpose. Take last night’s over-the-back pass to Howard. It drew excitement from the crowd and praise on Twitter, but that’s not why she did it. Johannès threw the ball backwards because the angle of her defender didn’t allow her to swivel for a direct pass to Howard. Johannès brings excitement to the Liberty, but more importantly, she provides a playmaking ability that complements Ionescu and creates more opportunities for New York’s offense.

Last night’s run

The Sky held a 91-85 lead when Courtney Vandersloot made a layup with 3:32 left on the clock. From there, Chicago didn’t score again. The Liberty closed the game on a 13-0 run in which the Sky went 0-for-8 from the field, with multiple turnovers and head-scratching decisions.

“I think we panicked a little bit,” Azurá Stevens said. “And not forced, but maybe a little bit. We were down and we were trying to get back. I feel like we haven’t panicked all year.”

While the Sky looked nervous down the stretch, the Liberty remained stoic and chipped away at the six-point deficit before eventually taking and building the lead.

That leads back to the confidence the Liberty developed by playing the Sky close in their previous meetings. They’ve seen on three separate occasions that they can keep up with the defending champions, and on Wednesday that belief guided the Liberty to victory.

Three-point shooting

The Liberty made 11 3-pointers against the Sky on Wednesday, shooting at a 44 percent clip, with seven players knocking down at least one shot from long-range. They score 36.5 percent of their points from beyond the arc, which leads the league. That’s a defensive nightmare. When everyone can shoot 3s, it means the defense can’t ignore any one player, and the constant need to close-out to 3-point range opens lanes to the basket and entry passes to the post. Especially when some of the 3-point threats are bigs. Dolson and Han Xu force teams to defend well beyond the arc, meaning shot-blockers aren’t anywhere near the hoop.

Plus, with their ability to knock down 3s, the Liberty are always within striking distance.

New playoff format

The final piece to the puzzle is the playoff format. With last season’s layout, the Sky, as the team with the second-best record, would have received a double bye. Instead, they are playing a three-game series.

Games 1 and 2 take place in Chicago, but Game 3 will be in New York, meaning the Liberty have a shot to sweep the series on the road on Saturday. But if they lose, they then get home-court advantage for the series-deciding contest, a scenario Sky head coach James Wade decried on Tuesday.

“You go into a series, especially in this format, and you just need to steal one,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said.

The Liberty have done that. Now, with two chances to finish the job and advance to their first semifinal series since 2015, they need to steal just one more.

Eden Laase is a Staff Writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @eden_laase.

Stefanie Dolson has agreed to a multi-year deal with the New York Liberty, per The Athletic’s Chantel Jennings, opting to leave the Chicago Sky in free agency after winning a WNBA championship last season.

New York native Stef Dolson has agreed to terms to a multi-year deal with the New York Liberty, per sources.

— Chantel Jennings (@ChantelJennings) January 30, 2022

The New York native, selected sixth overall by the Washington Mystics in the 2014 draft, joined Chicago in 2017 along with Kahleah Copper as part of the deal for Elena Delle Donne. Dolson spent five seasons with the Sky, helping the franchise its first WNBA title last October. The two-time All-Star averaged 7.5 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.3 assists across 24 games last season.

Dolson will join a Liberty team with Sandy Brondello at the helm, after New York hired the former Phoenix Mercury head coach in early January. Dolson will provide a critical presence down low for a roster that currently features Betnijah Laney, Michaela Onyenwere and Sabrina Ionescu.

The Liberty finished the 2021 regular season 12-20 and made the playoffs for the first time since 2017, before getting knocked out in the first round by the Mercury.

Stefanie Dolson had a banner 2021, winning Olympic gold with Team USA’s 3×3 squad in Tokyo and a WNBA championship with the Chicago Sky. At 29 years old, Dolson is hitting her stride after playing eight years in the WNBA and competing with USA Basketball since her U18 days.

The Sky center made history alongside Allisha Gray, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young when they clinched the first-ever 3×3 basketball gold medal at the 2020 Olympics, a run that Dolson said re-energized her.

“It was just such a nice break from 5-on-5. I think if I went and played 5-on 5 basketball, it would’ve been a little bit harder maybe, or easier to feel burnt out,” Dolson tells Just Women’s Sports. “So I think it helped that I played 3-on-3. It kind of gave me that break from the season of the W.”

Riding the momentum from her Tokyo win, Dolson came back from the break ready to close out the second half of the WNBA season with her Sky teammates, who were some of her biggest supporters during the Olympics.

“Winning kind of brought me back on a high. My team was amazing, they were so sweet when I got back,” she says. “They had, like, these shirts made. It was really cute. I hate the attention, but I appreciate the statement, so they were really nice.”

The team chemistry Dolson attests to was on full display when the Sky went from the sixth seed in the playoffs to WNBA champions, securing the first title in franchise history.

Dolson’s landmark season, however, didn’t come without its challenges. The 29-year-old revealed in early 2020 and that she and her entire family tested positive for COVID-19 and her mom was hospitalized with the virus. Dolson experienced symptoms herself and didn’t return to the court for five months. During the 2020 season in the WNBA bubble, she played a career-low 18.2 minutes per game.

So, going into the 2021 offseason, Dolson decided to fully commit to her overall health, including changing her approach to nutrition. In an Instagram post celebrating the Sky’s championship, Dolson opened up about the hard work she put in during the winter months.

“I worked my ass off this offseason to lose weight, get quicker and be my best version of myself to help my team and I did just that!” she wrote.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Stefanie Dolson (she/her) (@bigmamastef)

“For me, this was probably my biggest year when it comes to my body and stuff. I lost weight in the offseason, I decided not to go overseas,” Dolson says. “I lost 30 pounds.”

Nutrition and conditioning have been paramount for Dolson since she was a college athlete at UConn and learned she had to go the extra mile to refuel her body.

“Even at the end of last year, I wasn’t able to run the floor very hard,” Dolson told the Hartford Courant during her senior season in 2014. “I think that has improved immensely. I know how hard to work now. I have the instinct now to know how I have to work.”

That mentality helped Dolson overcome a foot injury, isolation and underperformance in 2020.

“I feel like my injury was from the weight that I gained from quarantine and from being home,” she says. “So I had to lose it. I got more fit, and then that’s when I started using this product called UCAN.”

The all-natural, zero-sugar energy product has become essential to Dolson’s training regimen in 2021, helping her overcome a grueling schedule to reach new heights. With UCAN, Dolson said that she doesn’t “crash because of the sugar,” something she has become hyper-aware of over the course of her basketball career.

“Just using products like UCAN, watching my carbs, my sugar, like all that stuff, it’s just helped me kind of be the best player that I can be,” she says.

UCAN’s wide range of products, including protein bars and energy powders, helped Dolson “maintain my weight throughout the season and still stay energized.”

“What the nutritional quality translates to for women is the ability to have a fuller capacity of their fuel source for training,” says Dr. Cathy Yeckel, an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale School of Medicine and a nutritional consultant for UCAN. “It’s a healthier choice and it can translate to a bigger fuel repertoire when they come to the line to train.”

As for Dolson’s favorite flavor? “Cookies and cream, of course!”

After an eventful year, Dolson enters the offseason as an unrestricted free agent. She joins Sky teammates Courtney Vandersloot, Allie Quigley and Kahleah Copper on the market.

While the future of the Chicago squad — and the possibility of a WNBA title defense — is uncertain, Dolson has found a recipe for success mentally and physically.

Clare Brennan is an associate editor at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @clare_brennan2.

(Editor’s note: UCAN is a sponsor of Just Women’s Sports)

Stefanie Dolson and the Chicago Sky completed one of the most unlikely championship runs in WNBA history, turning around a 2-7 start to first make the 2021 playoffs and then win it all.

“I don’t know if it was that close of not making [the playoffs], but it was a little too close for comfort,” Dolson told Kelley O’Hara on the Just Women’s Sports podcast.

Finishing the regular season 16-16, the Sky clinched the sixth seed heading into the postseason.“It wasn’t great for us, but we just knew if we made it that we had a chance.”

Rather than view the playoffs as an extension of the 2021 season, Chicago treated the postseason as a fresh start.

“Playoffs are a whole new season,” said Dolson. “When you say clean slate, it’s clean slate, especially with the way we have it with the first two rounds [being one game each].”

The Sky battled through those single-elimination games with renewed energy, beating No. 3 Minnesota to advance to the semifinals.

“We have nothing to lose we can just go out and just play kind of free,” Dolson said of the team’s mindset at the sixth seed.

“We did a whole defense that we’d never done all season,” revealed Dolson .“Who knows why, but it worked.”

“Everyone stepped up their play and it was just an incredible ride honestly.”

The WNBA Championship is still sinking in for Dolson, who admits to O’Hara, “I still can’t believe what happened to be honest with you, because we played so many great teams.”

Dolson says that winning the WNBA title was similar to how she felt after taking home gold in 3×3 basketball in Tokyo. Pure joy mixed with overwhelming relief, Dolson remembers experiencing a flood of emotions as the final buzzer went off.

“You just kind of look up in the sky and then you just find someone to hug and then you just hug them.”

As for the celebration, Dolson says the most memorable part of the post-championship party was the fact that Chance the Rapper was there. “He’s been to one other game in my entire career in Chicago and then all of a sudden he’s at both of these home games and celebrating with us.”

Dolson admits she was struck at how down to earth the Chicago-born star was, revealing that while the team was up, standing on sofas in the club, “he’s just walking around, normal crowd, like he’s just a normal person. I’m like, do you know who you are? Because if I was you I would be up here.”

Listen to the full conversation with Dolson and O’Hara to hear more about the basketball star’s journey to the WNBA title and her gold-medal run in Tokyo.

The first-ever Team USA 3×3 women’s basketball team won its first two games on Saturday morning, defeating No. 1 France, 17-10, and Mongolia, 21-9 to cap an unbeaten opening day.

Against France, Stefanie Dolson, who plays for the WNBA’s Chicago Sky, led the Americans with seven points, shooting 7-of-8 from the field and collecting six rebounds.

Kelsey Plum also added six points to the scoreboard, while Allisha Gray had three points and five rebounds.

Let's gooo! First Olympic game, first Olympic win! 👏@bigmamastef goes for a game-high 7 PTS, @Kelseyplum10 added 6 PTS.#3x3 #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/fliOHV7ovZ

— USA Basketball 3x3 (@usab3x3) July 24, 2021

Later, the Americans dominated Mongolia from the beginning as they sunk 11 of the first 12 points to cruise to an easy win well under the time limit.

Making history as the first from their country competing in a team event, Mongolia was no match for Team USA’s powerful defense and Allisha Gray’s sharpshooting.

Gray made four threes in the first 4:19 against Mongolia and went on to lead the way with 9 points.

Stefanie Dolson continued her earlier domination against Mongolia, combining for 12 points and 13 rebounds in Team USA’s Saturday wins.

Sure, it's hot out but Lish @Graytness_15 is on absolute 🔥🔥🔥

6:55 | 🇺🇸 7 🇲🇳 1#3x3 #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/8hnzwKVYEb

— USA Basketball 3x3 (@usab3x3) July 24, 2021

The team will square off against Romania and Russia on Sunday.

Read more about the story behind the rise of 3×3 here.