Liberty vs. Dream: Five Players Score 16-Plus for a Franchise First in New York's Sixth Straight Win

The Atlanta Dream forced 20 New York turnovers on Thursday night, won the fast-break battle 14-0 and lost by 14 anyway. That's what happens when the other team turns your gym into a shooting drill.

New York got at least 16 points from five different players, something the franchise had never done in a game, while Satou Sabally made five of her six 3s off the bench. The result was a 104-90 Liberty win over the Dream at Gateway Center, their sixth straight. It was the most points anyone had scored on Atlanta all season, and the first time any team had hit 100 against the Dream since the 2024 season.

A Banked Prayer and a Half Nobody Could Guard

New York opened 11-3, Atlanta answered with eight straight to tie it, and the Liberty took a 21-19 edge out of the first. The Dream then scored 10 of the first 12 points of the second quarter for a 29-23 lead, and for a few minutes this looked like a real fight.

Then New York remembered it had shooters. Marine Johannes scored 12 in the quarter, a 13-3 Liberty run flipped the game back, and the visitors went 10-of-12 from the field in the period. The capper came at the horn: after a 26-foot Johannes 3, Pauline Astier banked in a 53-footer as the half expired for a 51-44 lead. If you're Atlanta, that one is hard to shake off in the tunnel.

Atlanta still tried. An 8-0 run early in the third cut it to 54-52, and New York responded by going 6-of-8 from deep in the quarter. Sabally's back-to-back 3s pushed it to 80-62, and the Liberty led 80-64 going into the fourth.

The Turning Point: Two Points That Disappeared

Atlanta had one more push in it. Allisha Gray scored four quick points to make it 80-69, and then Jordin Canada picked Jonquel Jones' pocket and fed Angel Reese, who scored and drew contact from Astier. With the free throw, that would have made it an eight-point game.

It wasn't. Reese gestured at Astier, officials went to the monitor, and the review turned the whole play around: foul on Reese, technical on Reese, basket off the board. Breanna Stewart made the free throw for an 81-69 lead, and the moment was gone. "I felt like we were onto something," coach Karl Smesko said. "That was definitely a setback. You've just got to try to make another run, and we never really got to make another serious push at it."

Sabally's fifth 3 made it 91-73 midway through the quarter, and the rest was formality.

Everybody Eats

Stewart led the way with 19 points, 11 rebounds, five assists and two steals, going 9-of-11 at the line. New York's notes say it was the 17th time she's reached 10 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in a game, moving her past Tamika Catchings for second-most in WNBA history. Jones had 16 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and three blocks while hitting four 3s, and the pair became only the second set of teammates in league history to each reach 15 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in the same game. The first did it in 2000.

Sabally needed just 17 minutes to score 19. Johannes had 17 on 5-of-6 shooting and moved past Cappie Pondexter into sixth on the franchise's made-3s list. Astier scored 16 with five assists and a career-high eight rebounds, which is a lot of production for a rookie whose signature moment was a heave from another zip code.

For Atlanta, Reese scored a season-high 25 with nine rebounds, six of them offensive, though her run of five straight games with at least 10 and 10 came to an end. Rhyne Howard had 24 and made five of her 13 3s, and she got a real piece of history: she's now the youngest player in WNBA history with 400 career 3s, getting there in 147 games. She also moved into fourth on the Dream's all-time scoring list. Gray added 18 on 7-of-11 shooting, though she went just 3-of-9 at the line, and Jordin Canada had seven assists without making a field goal.

"They hit every shot," Reese said. "When you hit 50% from 3 and 50% from (the) field it makes it tougher to win."

Stats That Matter

• 16-of-31 vs. 9-of-29: New York and Atlanta from 3-point range, a 21-point difference in a 14-point game.
• 24-of-28 vs. 15-of-27: Free throws. Atlanta missed 12 of them, and that's a brutal way to spend a night when you can't afford to leave anything out there.
• 40-24: New York's rebounding margin, including a 33-15 edge on the defensive glass. It was the Liberty's fifth straight game with at least 40 boards.
• 20 to 5: Total turnovers, New York's way. The Dream scored 23 points off those to the Liberty's 10, and it still wasn't enough.
• 0: New York's fast-break points. The Liberty did not need them.

What It Means

New York is 9-4 and 4-1 on the road, the six-game streak is tied for the 10th-longest in franchise history, and the Liberty are 4-0 in Commissioner's Cup play with two games left. Washington comes to town on Sunday.

Atlanta falls to 8-4, 4-2 at home, and a two-game winning streak is over. The bigger damage may be in the Cup, where the Dream dropped to 3-2 with one game remaining, at Toronto on Sunday, and their own recap conceded that a spot in the June 30 final is probably out of reach. Smesko wasn't panicking. "We're still a really good team," he said. "New York's a really good team, too."

No Consolation Prizes

Reese had the sharpest line of the night, one that fits anybody stuck on the wrong end of a heist movie where everybody on the other side gets their big scene. "Career-highs don't matter when you lose," she said. Nobody in a Liberty uniform had that problem on Thursday.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Postgame quotes from the Atlanta Dream's recap. Game details from the Associated Press and the New York Liberty's recap.