In the third quarter of Saturday’s first-round playoff game, Chicago Sky guard Allie Quigley paused midplay to grin.
Quigley had just picked off her fourth steal of the day, snagging a New York Liberty pass out of midair and pushing the ball upcourt.
With a 63-32 lead displayed on the scoreboard, she had time and space to soak in the moment. So Quigley beamed as she fed Emma Meesseman for a transition layup to stretch the lead in a dominant 100-62 victory in Game 2 to force a decisive Game 3.
Three days earlier, the Sky didn’t have much to smile about at Wintrust Arena. The reigning champions opened the playoffs with an upset loss, fumbling a lead in the final three minutes of Game 1 in the best-of-three series.
As Quigley launched her pass to Meesseman, there still were 15 minutes remaining. But the game already was won — in fact, it basically was over after the Sky roared to a 31-10 lead in the first quarter.
The Sky finished with an authoritative 38-point victory, breaking the record for the largest playoff win in WNBA history.
“It was more for us than anyone else just to build that confidence within ourselves,” captain Courtney Vandersloot said. “When we play our game, we believe that we can beat anybody and we can beat them similar to (today). We didn’t come in here thinking we wanted to win by 40. We just wanted to win and we wanted to do it our way.”
When the Sky opened the playoffs with an upset loss to the Liberty, coach and general manager James Wade fell back on one phrase: “We’re fine.”
Wade echoed the refrain again and again: about his team’s upset loss to the Liberty on Wednesday, about the prospect of facing elimination as a favorite and emphatically about star wing Kahleah Copper, who exited practice Friday with an apparent right leg injury that seemed to jeopardize her odds of starting Saturday.
True to Wade’s word, Copper was fine by game time, putting together one of the most dominant postseason performances of her career.
Copper showed no signs of injury as she flew from baseline to baseline, bounding over opponents to score a game-high 20 points and snag three steals.
“The world was put upside down yesterday, so I think she just came out and let everybody know she’s still Copper,” Wade said.
With Copper surging in the attack, the reigning champions didn’t just delay elimination — they made a statement of intent. The Sky launched a full-court press up 31 points in the third quarter, and Wade didn’t pull his starters until the team held a 39-point lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Seven players registered a steal in the blowout as the Sky methodically picked apart a Liberty offense that challenged them in Game 1. The Sky were more than willing to exchange a handful of fouls for a smothering perimeter presence. After struggling to contain the Liberty’s pick-and-roll game Wednesday, the Sky swarmed in rotation to collapse onto rolling players in Game 2.
The Liberty crumbled under the pressure, turning the ball over 19 times while making only 20 field goals. They shot 33.3% from the field and 15% from 3-point range with leading scorer Sabrina Ionescu managing only seven points while Copper closely guarded her.
“It was a wake-up call for us,” Vandersloot said. “We shouldn’t have had to have it, but we did. And it woke us up. We came into this game with a different mentality. We knew what got us through games in the regular season wasn’t going to do the same in playoffs. So we were able to pick it up another notch. We saw a different team (today) and we feel like a different team.”
With the Liberty offense sputtering, the Sky pushed the pace in transition to power a high-scoring offense. Vandersloot finished with 16 points and Candace Parker added 12. Allie Quigley fed the offense with eight assists while Azurá Stevens (14 points) and Rebekah Gardner (11 points) fueled the team off the bench.
The Sky will travel to New York for Game 3 on Tuesday at the Barclays Center. A win would put them in the best-of-five semifinals.
“If we play like that, it doesn’t matter where we play,” Wade said. “We could play on the moon, but we have to be who we want to be. That’s what we did today.”