Angel Reese made two free throws, giving the Atlanta Dream a 3-point lead in overtime. 4.3 seconds left on the clock, the New York Liberty’s Leonie Fiebich takes the ball out of bounds and looks for an inbound pass. She throws a difficult pass which somehow ends in the hands of Breanna Stewart. The Liberty star airballs an awkward 3-point shot, and the Liberty go 0-2 in the series with a 101-98 loss.
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The entire scenario left fans watching the game asking the same question: Why didn’t the Liberty advance the ball to the frontcourt and draw a better play? The answer finally came during the postgame press conference. Visibly frustrated, Stewart told reporters that the referees told her that the Liberty didn’t have any reset timeouts left, leaving Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham shocked.
“I’m just going to tell you, someone saying that they don’t know the rules in our series and now Stewie doesn’t know,” Cunningham said on her No Hesitation podcast. “She asked [if her team had a reset timeout], and they said that she didn’t. That is like that’s f*cked up, excuse my French, but that’s actually f*cked up.”
For those who are wondering what a reset timeout is, it is a special timeout in the WNBA that allows a team to advance the ball to the frontcourt within the last two minutes of the game. Teams can change the lineup, but can’t huddle up on the bench to make strategy. Each team gets one in regulation and one in overtime. The Liberty hadn’t used theirs in overtime.
Cunningham’s views haven’t been very positive about the referees, and she has been very vocal about it since joining the Fever. However, on Saturday, she blamed the coaching staff for the mishap.
“I think there definitely needs to be some clarification on the communication with Stewie and the head coach and the refs. You already know how I feel about the refs, but New York, their assistants, or whoever has control over the timeouts and normally does that, they have got to make sure that the head coach and everyone knows. There’s no excuse there,” she added.
The Liberty head coach, Chris DeMarco, later clarified that his team had people assigned around the team bench who keep track of the timeouts. The staff needs to be extremely careful because calling a reset timeout without having one would lead to a technical foul and free throw. But Stewart said that the blunder was from the referees, who told her that they didn’t have any reset timeouts remaining.
“This is not blaming the refs, but when I ask both refs if we have a reset timeout at the end, and they tell us no, and then we leave the game with the reset timeout, it’s pretty frustrating,” Stewart said.
“I asked Kevin [Fahy]. I said, ‘Do we have a reset timeout?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to check at the table.’ So then he looked to [crew chief] Fatou [Cissoko-Stephens], and she said, ‘No.’ So then he told me, ‘No.’”
The Liberty lost the game, and perhaps nothing would change the result. Unless the WNBA decides to replay the game with 4.3 seconds remaining in the game, and the Liberty are allowed to advance the ball to the frontcourt, a hypothetical situation that Cunningham later created.
According to Jonquel Jones, the responsibility for the glitch lay more with the Liberty and not just the officials.
“It’s not just on [the officials]; it’s a bit on us, too,” Jones told reporters. “We have to understand how many resets, how many timeouts, and stuff that we all have as well.”
Down 0-2 in the series, the Liberty can’t dwell in the past. They need to make the most of the home-court advantage in the next two games.
Breanna Stewart calls out officials for questioning her “integrity”
After the game, Alexa Philippou asked crew chief Fatou Cissoko-Stephens about Stewart’s claim. Cissoko-Stephens said that between Angel Reese’s free throw, Kavin Fahy confirmed with his partner that the Liberty indeed had a reset timeout remaining. Cissoko-Stephens’ claim now directly clashes with Stewart’s account, who said Fahy told her otherwise.
Before Game 3 at Barclays Center, Stewart spoke to the reporters about the Cissoko-Stephens claims.
“I really don’t want to talk much about this. My main focus is Game 3, but what I will say is you want to have respect between players and refs, and in order to have respect, you need to build trust,” she said. “Building trust comes with being honest. Putting me in a position to question my integrity is really disappointing. I know who I am and what I stand for and what I’ve heard, and I’m going to continue to move on.”
Interestingly, Stewart’s teammate, Sabrina Ionescu, told reporters that she had also asked the referees about the remaining timeout. She said one of the referees said yes, while the other crew nodded her head, saying that the Liberty didn’t have any timeouts remaining. Ionescu said that she was “conflicted” about the answer. However, she also admitted that she should have been more “demonstrative” with her teammates.