For the defending champions, it all comes down to this. The New York Liberty had a chance to close out the Phoenix Mercury on Wednesday night and failed to do so, falling 86-60 at home. It was a loss that Liberty star forward Breanna Stewart described as “[embarrassing]”.
Phoenix now has the upper hand, with all the momentum and home-court advantage in its favor. New York has plenty of questions and, perhaps, not enough answers.
The game will begin at 9 p.m. ET. The Mercury are 2.5-point favorites on DraftKings Sportsbook (-142 Moneyline), with the total set at 155.5 points. The Liberty, meanwhile, are +120 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down the highly-anticipated clash and offer a prediction.
Liberty at Mercury prediction, pick
After a hot first few minutes, basically everything that could’ve gone wrong for New York did go wrong. The Liberty opened the game with a Jonquel Jones corner triple and a Sabrina Ionescu Eurostep layup in front of a frenzied Barclays Center crowd en route to a 14-8 lead. They were outscored 78-46 after that, with Jones — last season’s Finals MVP — not making another basket the rest of the way. Only one New York player scored in double figures, and it wasn’t Jones, Ionescu, or Stewart, who combined for just 22 points. Ionescu was particularly off, shooting just three-for-13 (23.1%) from the field and one-for-eight (12.5%) from downtown. Phoenix, meanwhile, was sharp from inside the arc, going 27-for-47 (57.4%) from two-point range, thanks in part to some shoddy transition defense and missed rotations by the Liberty.
I’m not sure that New York’s pathway to victory in Game 1 was particularly sustainable. Mercury star forward Satou Sabally shot just two-for-17 from the field, the least efficient performance of her playoff career and of her 2025 season. It wasn’t just Sabally; Kahleah Copper was just five-for-13 and Monique Akoa Makani two-for-11. In Game 2, Sabally was dominant on both ends, Copper hit tough shot after tough shot, and Akoa Makani was sharp from the midrange even though she missed all three of her triples. Phoenix also lost the rebounding battle, 48-31, after recording more rebounds than the Liberty did during the regular season. Expecting Natasha Cloud to record 23 points, six rebounds, five assists, and four steals like she did in Game 1 is unrealistic; by game score, it was the third-best performance of her playoff career.
If New York wants to pull off the upset in Game 3, Stewart will need to be healthy and the team will need to limit turnovers. So far, the Liberty have coughed it up 35 times, while the Mercury have recorded just 18. It’s an exaggerated version of a trend that held during the regular season; Phoenix averaged slightly fewer turnovers than New York and forced slightly more. Both teams will need to be sharp in the restricted area: after the All-Star break, both teams allowed fairly high percentages on layups and were stingy everywhere else. For the Mercury, that should put the onus on Thomas, who’s had an excellent series so far, and for the Liberty, Jones will need to show up more offensively. A healthy Stewart would help, too: among players who attempted three or more restricted-area shots per game, Stewart’s 74.6% clip ranked third.
The Liberty also struggled to guard the three-point line after Stewart returned from the bone bruise that kept her out for a month, in part because she re-entered the starting lineup in place of Emma Meesseman, who’s less of a rim protector and more of a perimeter stopper. When Stewart is on the floor and Meesseman is off, Phoenix will be able to rely on its shooting specialists, Sami Whitcomb and Akoa Makani. The Mercury have no such clear defensive weaknesses for New York to prey on, so the Liberty will just have to hope that Ionescu’s shot is falling. This season, more often than not, that hasn’t been the case.
