The Liberty’s frustrations that first emerged when the Commissioner’s Cup championship shifted from Barclays Center to UBS Arena still haven’t faded.
It was palpable ahead of their morning shootaround Tuesday, before they attempted to defend their in-season tournament title against the Lynx, but ultimately fell 94-89.
Breanna Stewart brought it up unprompted near the end of an answer.
Jonquel Jones used the words “frustrated” and “annoyed” to express the Liberty’s frustration for not truly hosting the title game despite their 5-0 record — with all of those games across an eight-day stretch — to emerge as the Eastern Conference’s representative.
UBS Arena, where the Islanders play on Long Island, is still in New York.
Fans could travel. The crowd would primarily don Liberty colors.
But the sting of getting uprooted because of the NBA draft — with the first round taking place at Barclays Center on Wednesday — served as an overarching storyline to what unfolded across the 40 minutes that determined the Commissioner’s Cup champion, with the Liberty competing for a share of a $500,000 prize for the team and an additional $10,000 donation to Women Creating Change.
“We worked really hard for home-court advantage, and it would be nice if our home court was actually available before we choose the date that the event was gonna be,” Stewart said.
The arena, which opened in 2021 for the Islanders and is stationed next to the Belmont Park racetrack, has hosted basketball before.
St. John’s played three games there last season.
Stewart went to an Islanders game before the WNBA campaign began, and Stewart, Jones and head coach Sandy Brondello complimented the facility’s transformation into a basketball court.
Asked about her first impressions of the arena, though, Jones responded with, “You want me to be honest? The only thing I felt was that it’s not Barclays.”
That issue didn’t have an easy solution.
The Liberty notified the WNBA of the conflict in December, according to multiple reports, and once the Liberty and the Lynx clinched their spots in the title game, the Liberty reportedly asked if the July 2 game between the two teams could double as the title game.
The Lynx declined.
There was also reportedly a possibility that the game could get moved to Minnesota, according to the Associated Press, but the Liberty declined that.
“With the scheduling of the NBA Draft at Barclays Center on June 26, the NBA created an unavoidable conflict for use of the building,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said in a statement last week.
The decision caused more issues for fans than players, Stewart said, with the different travel wrinkles.
Maybe there are other groups of spectators who could attend with the different venue, she added, but Jones said it felt similar to a road game because she packed clothes in a suitcase and rode a bus.
Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve called it “absurd” to consider this a neutral court game — “we came a long way to be here, and we won’t have a lot of our Lynx fans to be able to be here,” she said.
What frustrated Jones, though, was that this all surfaced after the Liberty won their five games and navigated the brutal stretch of playing those across eight days.
They needed to defeat the Mystics on June 9 — which they did, 93-88 — to clinch the home-court advantage at the end of their cluster of games.
Then, just over a week later, the news about the changed location broke.
Jones said there will be conversations, at some point, to make sure that the scenario doesn’t materialize for another team in the future.
But in the present, it created a different backdrop for the Liberty to win just the second title of any kind in franchise history.
“It’s a little bit of frustration, little bit of annoyance right now,” Jones said, “but at the end of the day, we get a chance to play for a Commissioner’s Cup championship and our mindset and everything will be in the right place for the game tonight.
“But just gotta use this opportunity to voice how we feel.”