It took a year, but the New York Liberty finally got the last laugh on Kelsey Plum and the Las Vegas Aces.
After the Aces defeated the Liberty in the 2023 WNBA Finals last October, Plum, 30, courted controversy with her postgame comments about the New York squad.
“I think we knew we hadn’t played our best basketball,” Plum said. “We also knew that, as much as they’re a team, they’re not a team, if that makes sense. They’re really good individual players, but they don’t care about each other. And you can tell in those moments. They revert back to individual basketball.”
Plum’s dig did not sit well with Liberty star Jonquel Jones, whose response to Plum has resurfaced in the wake of the Liberty eliminating the Aces from the 2024 WNBA playoffs on Sunday, October 6, ending their quest for a third consecutive league title.
“She’s not in our locker room,” Jones, 30, said last year. “She doesn’t know what goes on in our locker rooms and our huddles. I think it’s easy to kick people when they’re down and you’re up.”
Jones added, “Honestly, to me, it felt kind of classless. You already won a championship, you get to celebrate with your teammates, you get to talk about things that your team did to be successful, and you choose to essentially just s— on somebody else and their team and what they’ve built all year. I don’t care anything for it, to be honest.”
Sunday’s win was also a cathartic, well-earned moment for the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart, who dedicated the game to the late father of her wife, Marta Xargay Casademont.
“My father-in-law passed away last year, yesterday,” Stewart, 30, told reporters on Sunday. “No matter what, it’s a really tough time. Just the way that the series went last year, kind of going through all of that, and making sure that this year’s different.”
She added, “Marta and I talk about doing everything that her dad would want us to do. We continue to do that.”
Stewart also made a thinly veiled reference to Aces head coach Becky Hammon, who ridiculed Stewart’s poor shooting performance in the 2023 Finals despite having just lost her father-in-law.
“I have receipts on the things that were said,” Stewart said. “The entire team does. My mentality today was to really go in and get this win for my wife and her dad.”
The Liberty will face either the Minnesota Lynx or Connecticut Sun when the 2024 WNBA Finals tip off on Thursday, October 10. The decisive Game 5 between the Lynx and Sun is Tuesday, October 8 in Minneapolis.
