Chris DeMarco doesn’t hold back on what Liberty need during brutal offensive nights

The New York Liberty may have already clinched a playoff spot, but there are still plenty of kinks left for them to iron out. In particular, their offense can come and go. On Thursday, their offense went down the drain, scoring just 60 points in four quarters in a 19-point defeat to the Golden State Valkyries, 79-60.

The Valkyries defense deserves credit for slowing down the Liberty, holding them to just 19-63 from the field (30.1%) on the night and just 7-31 from deep (22.6%). Sabrina Ionescu, in particular, had a rough scoring night — shooting just 2-12 from the field and finishing with seven points. Breanna Stewart wasn’t much better either, as she shot just 4-10 from the field even though she finished with 16 points.

Everything that could go wrong for the Liberty on the court felt like they did go wrong. But for head coach Chris DeMarco, they have to learn how to power through horrendous shooting nights by doubling their efforts elsewhere, including on the boards and on defense.

“A game like this, if we’re missing threes or we’re missing shots, you have to find other ways to get points, obviously. So our offensive rebounds, eventually we got there. We feel like we could [have] rebound a little bit more defensively. Probably have to turn them over a little bit more. We got the foul line pretty well, but again, generating open looks and those aren’t going down, and we’ve got to find ways to get stops defensively,” DeMarco said, per Liberty beat reporter Myles Ehrlich.

Nonetheless, putting points on the board is still the name of the game in basketball, and there isn’t much the Liberty can do when they can’t throw a stone into the ocean. All that’s left to do now for them is to bounce back in their next game against the Chicago Sky, which is on Saturday afternoon.

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