💥 BREAKING NEWS: New York Liberty erupt in emotional post-game as Marine Johannès and Jonquel Jones reveal raw truth behind Stewie’s injury fallout ⚡.BT

In a night that spiraled from bad to alarming, the New York Liberty didn’t just lose a game—they lost their rhythm, their defensive identity, and most painfully, their superstar Brianna Stewart. With a 6–1 Los Angeles team firing on all cylinders and the Liberty forced to navigate a brutal back-to-back with tired legs and scrambled rotations, frustration poured out of the players during one of the most revealing post-game pressers of the season.

Marine Johannès, who struggled through a scoreless first half before flipping a switch after the break, didn’t hold back when asked what’s stopping the Liberty from putting together a complete 40-minute performance.
“It was not a really good start,” she admitted bluntly. “Sometimes it’s not enough. Losing Stewie and KB… that’s huge for us.”

It wasn’t just the absence of star power. LA punished New York early with a barrage of threes—seven before halftime—forcing a scrambling defense into near-constant emergency rotations. Johannès praised LA’s chemistry and ball movement, calling them “a really good team playing really good basketball right now,” and acknowledging that New York simply couldn’t match the efficiency or the aggression early on.

But the second half gave fans a brief spark of classic Liberty magic. Johannès attacked downhill, flashed her creativity, and even delivered one of the best highlight passes of the season: a behind-the-back laser to Natasha Cloud in the corner.
“She told me I had the open layup,” Johannès laughed. “But I told her—I trust her more than myself.”

The moment perfectly captured the Liberty’s identity when they’re at their best: fast, fearless, and connected. But such flashes weren’t enough to erase the team’s deeper defensive problems.
“Our pick-and-roll defense wasn’t great tonight,” Johannès repeated. “We just have to be more consistent.”

Stephanie Talbot, thrust unexpectedly into heavier minutes after Stewart and Karlie Samuelson went out, echoed the same issues.
“We weren’t always on the same page,” Talbot said. “The first rotation was there… not always the second.”
For a team built on speed, communication, switches, and quick reads, being a half-second late became a fatal flaw. Talbot described the defense as “almost there but not really”—a problem that snowballed with every missed rotation, every tired step, every open LA look.

And yet, Talbot refused to use the chaos as an excuse.
“I didn’t want to foul,” she said of the final, painful shot LA dropped at the buzzer. “It was a tough finish. Credit to her.”

Then came Leonie Fiebich, who has quietly become one of New York’s steadiest role players but who also fought through her own injury knocks. The German forward didn’t sugarcoat the struggle.
“Today we were probably a step too late on every defensive possession,” she said, visibly exhausted. “Normally we’re there. Today… we weren’t.”

She also emphasized the mental side of a compact post-All-Star schedule:
“It’s more mental in these back-to-backs. You’re tired anyway… so it’s mind over matter.”

But the most emotional, wide-ranging perspective came from Jonquel Jones, who not only made history by moving up the franchise leaderboard in rebounds and blocks but also returned to back-to-back action for the first time since her injury.
“Stewie is Stewie,” Jones said, voice heavy. “She’s a force. It’s hard to articulate how important she is. She’s a facilitator, a rim protector, a gravity piece… you feel it everywhere when she’s gone.”

Jones revealed she hugged Stewart at halftime and could feel not just the physical pain but the emotional weight of the moment.

And though she played through her own fatigue, Jones pushed the conversation toward something bigger—player health and the WNBA’s suffocating post-All-Star scheduling.
“You want the best product out there,” she said. “More rest is better for us, better for the fans, better for the game. It should be a priority in the new CBA.”

Asked about adjusting to injuries and shuffled rotations, Jones didn’t mince words.
“It’s tough,” she said, especially against a team with LA’s size and physicality. “They were posting us up, crashing the glass, taking advantage of every mistake.”

Yet through all the disappointment, each player anchored themselves to the one thing that has carried the Liberty through their 6–2 homestand: their identity.
Sharing the ball.
Running in transition.
Trusting the open woman.
Feeding off an electric home crowd.

“When we play our identity,” Jones said, “we’re really hard to stop.”

Now the Liberty head into a difficult road trip—without knowing whether Stewart or Samuelson will be available—and needing answers fast. The team has struggled with slow starts all season, repeatedly playing from behind and relying on late surges to claw back deficits.

But as every player repeated in their own way, circumstances won’t matter.

Not the injuries.
Not the schedule.
Not the fatigue.
Not the road environment.

What matters is the first 12 minutes.
Because until the Liberty find a way to start a game with the same fire they use to finish one, every contest will feel like a chase.

Stewart’s status looms like a storm cloud. The rotations remain uncertain. The road ahead is unforgiving.

But the message from the locker room was clear:
They’re bruised.
They’re tired.
They’re shaken.

But they’re not backing down.