While most fans headed toward the exit following the Liberty’s 40-point win against the Las Vegas Aces on Sunday, the dozens who stayed behind showered Marine Johannes with hero worship after she wrapped up a postgame TV interview and headed to the locker room.
Johannes flashed a sheepish grin as she exchanged a few high-fives on her way off the floor after setting a new career high in points with 27.
Johannes helped carry the Liberty to Sunday’s comfortable 111-71 win. She lit it up during a monstrous fourth quarter, going 4-for-7 from beyond the arc for 12 points.
She tied her career high in 3-point makes, shooting 7-for-12 from deep.
“She shot crazy today,” Han Xu said of Johannes after the win. “I’m so proud of her. I know she’s an amazing player. Everybody knows, she just show herself today.”
Johannes was due for a big day like Sunday. She hadn’t looked quite like herself after missing three games with a left ankle injury last month. She had scored only a combined 11 points across the preceding four games, shooting 3-for-8 from deep.
After Sunday’s win, though, Johannes relished the team’s success rather than her own.
“It just feels good, knowing that [the Aces] were missing players, we had to stay ready, and we had to stay focused,” she said. “It’s just sharing the ball, playing with confidence and so yeah, I think we did a good job tonight as a team.”
Aces coach Becky Hammon called out the cadence of her team’s schedule amid a particularly grueling stretch of three games in four days.
Sunday’s nationally televised matinee started less than 24 hours after the Aces played the Lynx in Minnesota. As a result, Hammon decided to rest her star players A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young.
“Everybody has a brutal schedule at some point,” Hammon said. “We’re going to always err on the side of health and safety for our players, not going to put them in any kind of jeopardy to get hurt when we’ve been expending a lot of energy and traveling a lot of miles back and forth, crisscrossing the country. So it is what it is. I know these are big matchups, and these are what people want to see but you should ensure that it’s fair.”
Hammon questioned the legality of playing two games within a 23 ½-hour span. The new collective bargaining agreement, however, states the minimum time between the scheduled start of each game is 20 hours and bars teams from having to cross more than one time zone during that window.
The Aces are in the midst of a five-city, nine-day road trip that included stops in Chicago, Atlanta, Indiana, Minnesota and then New York.
Sunday was the first time their big three missed the same game since the regular-season finale in 2024.
Coach Chris DeMarco received a noticeable chorus of boos from the Barclays Center crowd when he was announced pregame.
When a reporter mentioned it after the game, Breanna Stewart quipped, “Welcome to New York.”
But DeMarco appeared unaware of the fan reaction.
“They love their team,” DeMarco said. “They want us to be successful.”
