Liberty will be tested by tough road trip after season’s first missteps

SEATTLE — The Liberty aren’t panicking. 

They made that abundantly clear after Thursday’s loss to the Mercury. 

Nor should New York be raising any alarms. 

Should it be disappointed? Sure, but not shaken. 

The season is far too young, and the reigning champions have looked like the best team in the league for most of the first month of play. 

But this road trip is a fine time for the Liberty (10-2) to get back on track after dropping two of their last three games. 

That, or it could be the onslaught of more trouble. 

The Liberty are set open a 10-day, four-city road trip Sunday in Seattle against the Storm (8-5) before heading to the Bay Area to play the Valkyries (6-6) for the third time this season Wednesday.

The trip concludes with the Mercury (10-4) on Friday and the Dream (9-4) on June 29. 

“A 10-day road trip is not easy no matter how you look at it,” Sabrina Ionescu said. “Playing four games, four different cities, traveling, not really getting complacent — obviously, any time you have that many road games, it’s tough. You never get to come back home and recalibrate. And use your fans to kind of help you and you have to find your energy in an opposing team’s arena. So it’s not going to be easy.” 

The Liberty have dealt with some personnel and lineup changes because of injuries and an overseas commitment. 

Nyara Sabally missed six of the first eight games with a knee issue, and Jonquel Jones already has had a few physical setbacks this season. 

After missing two games with a sprained right ankle, Jones aggravated that injury in the first half of Thursday’s loss and will miss four to six weeks. She also missed a game with an overextended hamstring. 

The Liberty also are without Leonie Fiebich for the foreseeable future because she’s overseas for EuroBasket. 

These hardships affect every team at various points of the season. The best ones, though, are able to find solutions with the players they have. 

“When adversity hits, your purpose is really challenged and we know where we want to be at the end of the season,” Natasha Cloud said. “And so we’re going to go through these growing pains early. You never want to peak too early.” 

One of the most concerning trends about the Liberty early this season is that they have a tendency at times to play with their food. 

Their sense of urgency drops, the offense gets clunky and the defense gets sloppy, and opponents take advantage of it. 

The Liberty have gone 2-2 in games when they’ve trailed by 10 or more points in the second half. 

Once things are unglued, it can be hard to get the team back on the same page, especially on defense. 

And for a team like the Liberty, who use their defense to fuel their offense, it can create big problems. 

“We need to have better awareness of what we’re doing and why on the court,” Breanna Stewart said Saturday. “[Seattle] is a pretty good test for us. We’re not always going to have every player. We’re not always gonna be perfect. But how are we going to respond throughout that and still put ourselves in the best chance to win?” 

If the Liberty aren’t careful, things could unravel. But five weeks into the season, they haven’t given us a reason to believe that could happen — at least not yet. 

Cloud said the team is going to channel that “road warriors” mentality that helped the Liberty win their first four road games of the season. 

“We’re going to keep chipping away and making sure that we’re getting better,” Cloud said. “And yeah, I just want to get some wins on this road trip.”