The Liberty led by 15, the Fever led by 12, and it was tied with a minute left. That was a game I needed, a reminder that I don’t have to wait for September to watch championship contenders play like championship contenders.
New York is stuck with a most-unenviable task of having to repeat (everything else is a failure), after it took so long to complete the first most-unenviable task of winning one. (Maybe we should think about Liberty team history only as far as Since James Dolan.)
Indiana built a new computer. That’s my only personal experience that matches. If you think your computer isn’t sufficient for the upcoming software development project (or league championship), you can upgrade nearly every part in it and around it (which Indiana did), but bugs will surface in hardware, software, and firmware. (See, there’s a level of computer architecture that some people have never heard of, and it breaks. Same with basketball organizations — maybe we’ve never seen it, and we only sense when it’s not working.)
That game could’ve been a mess, but both teams played the roles we’d want them to play: Indiana aiming to prove that their upgrade path is smooth (though it’s obvious they have to figure out how and where DeWanna Bonner fits), New York demonstrating that they can survive with the target on their backs.
Good game. Would’ve preferred watching it on my phone in my Los Angeles hotel room, but I truly botched the planning of that trip.