Liberty know they need to fix defensive shortcomings before it’s too late

This isn’t the version of the Liberty defense that held every opponent under 88 points the first nine games of the season. This isn’t the version that managed to overcome the loss of defensive anchor Betnijah Laney-Hamilton — out for the season on a suspended contract after March knee surgery — and adapt, either. 

On paper, the Liberty still have the No. 2 defensive rating in the WNBA this season (97.3), behind just the Lynx, but after getting torched by the Mercury 106-91 on Friday, and allowing over 100 points for the second time in six games, defensive issues have become glaring.

The effort from the reigning champions was blasted — by head coach Sandy Brondello, by offseason acquisition Natasha Cloud — after their latest defensive dud, too. 

Though the Liberty will be without two starters in Leonie Fiebich (EuroBasket with Germany) and Jonquel Jones (right ankle sprain) again Sunday when they face Atlanta, they’ve refused to let that become an excuse for what transpired in Phoenix and, by extension, the fourth-worst defensive rating (107.2) in the league the past two weeks. 

“I don’t care who’s not with us,” Brondello said postgame. “I don’t care. They’re not gonna save us here. What we’ve got, this is it.” 

The Liberty could get Fiebich back for their July 3 game against the Sparks, The Post’s Madeline Kenney reported earlier this week. Germany lost to Belgium in the quarterfinals, won a classification game against Turkey and will face Czechia for fifth place on Sunday — when the Liberty complete their current road trip with a game against the Dream.

Jones, however, suffered the sprain to the same ankle she injured earlier in the year and will miss at least another three to five weeks, based on the Liberty’s initial projection from last Saturday. 

Brondello called the Liberty “soft” after the Mercury game, where they allowed 61 points in the first half and surrendered 18 3-pointers. She said they had “no toughness” while defending.

They didn’t make Phoenix uncomfortable at all, and the Mercury became the seventh Liberty opponent in the past eight games to shoot over 41 percent from the field. The Liberty’s strength, dating back to when Breanna Stewart and Jones arrived to join Sabrina Ionescu ahead of the 2023 campaign, has been their offense. An ability to approach 100 points regularly. A surplus of options to carry the scoring each game. 

But they also flashed strong defensive potential, too, and finished with the No. 3 defensive rating each of the past two seasons. Stewart earned a spot on First-Team All-Defense in both seasons. Laney-Hamilton consistently shut down stars, including the Fever’s Caitlin Clark. Fiebich, after carving out a consistent role late last season, helped with wing defense. 

But the Liberty’s unit will continue to look different until Jones and Fiebich return. They won’t get Laney-Hamilton back at all this season.

Though they attempted to mount a comeback early in the third quarter Friday, while they produced some stops and started to claw back into the game, they can’t just do that in spurts, Cloud said. If they can go on those defensive runs, she said, that only means “we can give it for the totality of the game.” 

Through their opening 15 games, the Liberty have, once again, demonstrated an ability to operate as one of the league’s elite offenses. They entered Saturday with the best offensive rating (108.5) in the WNBA, set the record for 3-pointers in a game with 19 and then tied their own mark just games later.

But that might not matter in the marathon of a season — and whatever follows in the playoffs — without the defense to complement it. 

“We say often we have a lot of weapons on the offensive end all throughout our roster,” Cloud said, “but if we don’t get stops, that offense doesn’t mean anything.”