The New York Liberty closed their regular season with two consecutive losses to the Atlanta Dream, and it seems their troubles with Angel Reese and Co. have translated into the postseason. The Liberty, who overcame the top-seeded Minnesota Lynx in round one of the playoffs, were unable to recreate that magic, as the Dream took them down in a 92-82 Game 1 victory. Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu, who has recently returned to her peak form, was clearly disgruntled with the assist drought on the night.
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“It doesn’t matter. We didn’t win. I don’t think personal stats or any of that stuff matters to me. I need to find a way to get everyone else in better positions. I had one assist, so I’ve got to find ways to get JJ going a little bit more, Stewie going, continue to find Leo and Pauline, and that’s my job, and I’m going to do that next game,” said Ionescu, per WNBA writer Myles Elrich on X.
Sabrina Ionescu has returned to the New York Liberty after missing 12 early-season games due to injury concerns. She has still dealt with back soreness and ankle tweaks during the regular season, but has quietly returned to the form that earned her four consecutive All-Star nominations between 2022 and 2025.
After a regular season marked by inconsistent scoring, where she was averaging 14.6 points per game while adding 4.7 assists, the postseason demanded more. And Ionescu answered.
The playoffs so far have seen Ionescu lead the Liberty from the front along with franchise stars Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones. During the Liberty’s two consecutive-game losses to the Dream in the regular season, Ionescu scored a total of 22 points, but she became the Liberty’s primary scoring engine in Game 1 of the playoff series against the Dream.
Ionescu scored a game-high of 27 points for the Liberty, shooting 50% from the field and going 4-for-4 from the free-throw line. But as she admitted, her playmaking wasn’t the greatest. Sabrina Ionescu has averaged 4.7 assists per game throughout the regular season, and her passes to Jones and Stewart often resulted in essential points for the Liberty.
Against the Dream in Game 1, though, she managed a single assist, which came with 6:28 left in the first quarter of the game. The score was equalised at 6-6 when Ionescu found Jonquel Jones in the paint, as Jones found the net for two points, moving the score up to 8-6 in favor of the Liberty.
But Jones ended the matchup with only 12 points, while Stewart managed to add 19 more. Neither player scored as high as they usually do, and part of the reason may have been Ionescu’s dearth of assists. Starters Leonie Fiebich and Pauline Astier also couldn’t make much of an impact, scoring nine points each. Offensively, it was not the best night for the Liberty.
The Liberty were even ahead of the Dream at halftime, but a disastrous third-quarter collapse saw Sabrina Ionescu and Co. unable to clinch the win.
Q3 Collapse Erases Sabrina Ionescu and The Liberty’s Game 1 Hopes
As the halftime buzzer sounded, Sabrina Ionescu and the Liberty were up by three points with the score at 40-37 in their favor. But the Dream halftime huddle sparked a third-quarter surge, as they came back to outscore the Liberty despite losing their season’s leading scorer, Allisha Gray, late in the second quarter.
Jordin Canada, who was able to score only five points in the first half, exploded in the second half, scoring 20 points, 12 of which came in Q3. She was joined by Angel Reese and DeWanna Bonner, who added six points each to push the Dream to a Q3 score of 32, while their defense held the Liberty to only 15 points. The Dream stole the ball nine times in the third quarter, adding 16 valuable points to the final tally
Canada, after the game, gave Bonner her props for the first-half charge, which she then took over in the second half.
“DB got into us at halftime, I’ll just say that. We knew we didn’t play our best in the first half. … We just weren’t being aggressive enough on the defensive end and offensive end,” said the 31-year-old.
“We talked about a second-half surge, that the first three minutes of the second half are going to be really important, and so we came out ready to go,” she added.
The Liberty attempted a resurgence in the fourth quarter, with Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart adding 16 and 13 points, respectively, in the second half of the game. But the gap from Q3 was just too large to close for them.
“They upped their defensive pressure, and I think we were driving into driving lanes and not really creating a good outlet for our teammates,” Ionescu added after the game.
This win makes the Atlanta Dream the only team in the 2026 playoffs to go undefeated so far. Sabrina Ionescu and Co. will look to break this streak as both teams head to State Farm Arena in Atlanta for Game 2 on October 7. If the Dream win this five-game series, they will face either the Golden State Valkyries or the Las Vegas Aces in the 2026 WNBA Finals.