The Drama in the Final Seconds
The Atlanta Dream just pulled off a wild 101-98 overtime win to push the New York Liberty into an 0-2 hole, but the ending is causing major waves. With 4.3 seconds left on the clock, the Liberty were down by three. Instead of calling a play, they rushed a long pass that got tipped, forcing Breanna Stewart to take a desperate, off-balance heave at the buzzer that didn't stand a chance.
It looked like a massive coaching blunder by head coach Chris DeMarco, but the receipts tell a different story. In the postgame presser, Stewart dropped the tea: the officials explicitly told the Liberty they were out of timeouts.
The Officiating Fail
According to the WNBA rulebook, the Liberty actually did have a reset timeout remaining. Stewart noted that DeMarco checked with official Fatou Cissoko-Stephens, who shut him down.
"When I ask both refs if we have a reset timeout and they tell us 'no,' and then we leave the game with a reset timeout, it's pretty frustrating," Stewart said. Real talk—that is an absolute L for the officiating crew in a do-or-die playoff game. While the Liberty definitely had their own struggles—like Sabrina Ionescu tossing a ball into the fifth row late in the game—a mistake this big changes the entire energy of the final play. Even if they had used that timeout, they would have just been fighting for a second overtime, but it’s still majorly messy.
Why it matters
The Liberty are now facing a 0-2 deficit in the best-of-five series, and no team in WNBA history has ever come back from that hole. This isn't the only reason they lost, but getting shafted by a ref error on the final possession of a playoff game? Highkey a brutal way to end the night.
