Betnijah Laney Is the Scoring Threat the Liberty Needed

Laney has scored 20 or more points in her team’s first six games, the first Liberty player to achieve that. (The W.N.B.A. record for such a start to a season is nine games, held by Cynthia Cooper of the 1999 Houston Comets.) Defensively, she is a key reason the Liberty have cut their opponents’ points per 100 possessions to 99.2, from 105.9 last season.

Combine that stellar play with the return of Ionescu, who missed almost all of her rookie season with an injury, and the Liberty are tied with the Connecticut Sun at a league-best 5-1, on their way to their best season in at least four years. No matter what happens, they have already surpassed last year’s horrible 2-20 record, the second-worst season in league history.

Laney almost always deflects talk about her stunning improvement, turning the focus to her teammates and coaches. “It’s always the win first for me,” she said after a 26-point effort in the Liberty’s 88-81 win over the Dallas Wings in Brooklyn on Monday. “Obviously, I’m a part of the scoring threat, but I don’t ever go out and say, OK, I need to get this amount of points.”

Be that as it may, there is every reason to think the points, and the Liberty wins, will keep coming, through the regular season and beyond.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/sports/basketball/betnijah-laney-liberty.html