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00:00Championship party has gone through New York City this week, but there is so much to get
00:07to when it comes to this matchup. Now, once again, if you joined us last week when coach
00:12was talking about some of the best angles and props and how to view this game, one of
00:16the key things that he pointed out when it came to this matchup, when it came to New
00:19York pulling off a W, was if the Lynx would have a fast start. That's exactly what took
00:24place. They talked to the Liberty in that first quarter, 19 to 10, trying to get that
00:28momentum swing, trying to carry it over. But if you guys have been with us on this
00:32WNBA Today journey, you know the Lynx have been known to have that strong first quarter,
00:37a strong closeout in the fourth quarter, but it kind of gets into a toss-up situation when
00:41it comes to that second and third quarter. Second quarter, Liberty pull out in front,
00:4517 points to the Lynx, 15 points. Then when it came to the fourth quarter, it was the
00:51Lynx on top, but the third quarter was all Liberty. They were able to hold off just enough
00:55in that fourth quarter, regardless of how many points the Lynx tried to stack up. So
01:00who helped with this victory when it came to pulling off the W for the Liberty? Brandi
01:05Stewart only had 13 points through 45 minutes of play. She was going to be a key factor
01:10in racking up. All the books had her hitting at least 18 plus points, and that happened
01:15not to be the case, but it wasn't necessary for them in order to pull off success. Behind
01:20her, Nicole Jones. We've talked about her a lot with Coach James here on WNBA Today,
01:25and she only racked up 17 points through 42 minutes of play and six rebounds. But you know
01:31something that helped out tremendously? It's the 15 rebounds from Stewart. They were able to really
01:35get things going to consistently try to get the ball over to the Liberty's hands so that they
01:39can hold off the Lynx just enough. You had no 20-point scores when it came to the New York
01:46Liberty on Sunday to get this championship done. As for the other side, though, Minnesota had two
01:5220-point players pulling things off. Collier with 22 points, seven rebounds through 44 minutes of
01:57play. And then you've got McBride, who we've talked about so much throughout the WNBA season,
02:02with 21 points, five rebounds, and that's through 43 minutes of play. So a number of key playmakers
02:08did show up on Sunday, but it looks like it was time for the Liberty to raise the trophy,
02:13and that's exactly what went down. Now, what are some other takeaways when it comes to the victory
02:18of this season for the New York Liberty? Most importantly, what were some of the successes
02:23when it came to Sunday's game? First and foremost, it was a big finish for the 2020-4 WNBA season.
02:30The fifth game of the year WNBA Finals between Minnesota and New York was the most viewed WNBA
02:36Finals game in 25 years. Now talk about growing the sport. Talk about all the growth that came
02:43throughout this season, not only between ticket sales and getting butts in the seats, but also
02:47making sure that people were tuning in and supporting the growth of this sport. We saw
02:51that throughout the season, but most importantly, sometimes it's hard to retain that attention when
02:56it comes to the postseason, right? We've got baseball going on. We've got the football season
03:00getting into prime form, gearing towards the middle of their season. We've got college football
03:05getting ready to wrap up on November 30th, the World Series. There's so many factors playing in
03:09while the WNBA is taking place, and yet they were still able to pull in that viewership because of
03:14the talent and because of what this season has held thus far. Across all networks, especially
03:18according to ESPN, we had 3.3 million viewers to support the Minnesota Lynx taking on the New York
03:25Liberty, and the New York Liberty becoming champions after fighting year in and year out
03:30very, very hard. Now we're going to talk about other takeaways that have taken place throughout
03:33this season, but maybe if I can get the bracket on the board here, we can kind of do a small
03:37rewind or walkthrough as to what we saw throughout this postseason. We saw teams that we thought
03:42were dead in the water a few months ago come in to the postseason trying to battle it out.
03:47If it wasn't for Kaitlin Clark being the assist queen that she was all season long consistently,
03:52who knows if the Fever would have even seen the postseason. They had such a successful,
03:56consistent run once getting back from that Olympic break, but they weren't the only team.
04:00Another team that a number of people had a little sprinkle on when it came to the championship
04:05conversation was what was the Connecticut Sun going to do? They were pretty stout when it came
04:09to showing up defensively. They were good at creating turnovers, but they weren't the team
04:14that was able to do that night in and night out. And on top of it, you can be defensively sound and
04:18strong, but if you can't put some points on the board, you're going to fizzle out. And that's
04:22exactly what we saw, regardless of the numbers favorably that had the Connecticut Sun potentially
04:27sneaking in the mix of making it further than they did. Another team that was kind of interesting to
04:31watch throughout this WNBA season was the Dallas Wings. You have a team that knew how to slow down
04:37the game regardless of who their opponent was. We saw them go toe-to-toe with some of the top
04:42three teams in the WNBA this previous season, and they did that because they were able to slow down
04:47the game. They did that because they were able to force their opponent to play to their strengths,
04:51and that was something that played out pretty heavily here and there after that Olympic break.
04:56So probably one of the other takeaways when it comes to this WNBA season is the fact that some
05:00of those teams that were underestimated or that went through a lot of injury issues or that lost
05:05some key players along the way, they were able to kind of get this excitement back to their game
05:10after that Olympic break and create some good stretches there to really challenge the top teams
05:16in the WNBA. Now as for some other takeaways in the season and top-viewed games, we know that
05:22when the draft came about, we know that when Kaitlyn Clark and Angel Reese's names were
05:26participating and being a part of this season, that it was going to do a lot to impact this sport positively.