Liberty brace for Fever circus and expected sellout in Brooklyn

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Key points

• The third-year guard has emerged as an MVP candidate, averaging 22.4 points and a league-leading 8.3 assists per game.
• The Fever bested the Liberty by a combined 34 points in their past two meetings, both in front of a rowdy Indiana crowd.
• Then the Liberty are Barnum & Bailey, and Saturday's game is poised to be the greatest show of the weekend.
• The Liberty have the home-court advantage this time around and are expecting a sellout at Barclays Center.
• That's what has happened the past two times New York played the Fever.

See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Post on Google. The circus is coming to town Saturday.

Not one with trapeze artists, acrobats and clowns, but rather the Indiana Fever, a team that's – routinely but mostly unintentionally – discovered itself at the center of drama this season.

Notably, the Fever have created headlines for various reasons, including on-court incidents, sideline spats, arguing with office-holders and literal finger-pointing.

Sophie Cunningham's remarks regarding trans athletes and the resulting reaction, including planned rallies in her backing, have become the latest story surrounding the team.

Mostly overshadowed by all this talk, though, is the fact that the Fever are good. Really good and a joy to watch.

They're a true title contender with a lethal offense of historic proportions. In circus speak, Caitlin Clark is the ringmaster.

For context, the third-year guard has emerged as an MVP candidate, averaging 22.4 points and a league-leading 8.3 assists per game.

In practice, the Fever additionally have the league's second-leading scorer in Kelsey Mitchell, a dynamic sizeable in Aliyah Boston, an astute leader in coach Stephanie White and, well, a political lightning rod in Cunningham.

But if the Fever are the Ringling Bros. Then the Liberty are Barnum & Bailey, and Saturday's game is poised to be the greatest show of the weekend.

"It's definitely going to be a playoff game, " Breanna Stewart remarked Friday. "Obviously, you know there's a lot of implications behind it."

Notably, the Fever bested the Liberty by a combined 34 points in their past two meetings, both in front of a rowdy Indiana crowd.

For context, the Liberty have the home-court advantage this time around and are expecting a sellout at Barclays Center.

More importantly, though, New York feels like it has a lot on the line.

"I don't think it's just another game, I think we can prove tomorrow that we can beat these kind of teams, that we can play our style, " remarked Leonie Fiebich. This person hopes to suit up for her first game in seven weeks. "Sometimes we let the other teams dictate how we play, so I feel like we got to go out there and show how we want to play."

In both Liberty losses, Indiana pushed the pace, generated good looks from behind the arc and had New York playing on its back foot for long stretches. The Liberty fell into deficits of 20 or more points and never recovered.

Jonquel Jones views Saturday as an opportunity for the Liberty to show collective expansion on defense.

"I think that we can slow down a team that has such a high-powered offense, " Jones remarked. "In our matchups with them this year, they've been able to kind of just really obtain off on us and go off on us. And so, yeah, that we can slow them down, that we can create them feel uncomfortable."

Another subplot to Saturday is the potential for a political clash outside the arena.

There's a rally planned to "support Sophie, " with attendees asked to bring signs and wear shirts bearing XX and XY chromosomes. There's a counterprotest additionally scheduled in backing of trans inclusion.

In some ways, Saturday might be the perfect encapsulation of where the WNBA is right now, where basketball might be a background to everything else around it.

I feel like every year it's kind of gotten more and more and more not about basketball and about everything else that's going on, remarked Sabrina Ionescu when asked broadly concerning the off-court discourse surrounding the WNBA. I think it's tough since obviously there's a lot of things that are just going on in the world and society outside of sport, but sport is so intertwined in politics and everything else that's going on and especially with everyone having a platform, you have the opportunity to voice and fight for what you believe in and sometimes that's differing opinions, and you kind of have to just accept that not everyone is gonna have the same opinion as you.

"For me, just like there's a level of respect for everyone that I have, no matter what their opinions are, they're entitled to their opinion. And I respect everyone just like as a human being and for what they stand for until there's something that's disrespectful or something that's kind of targeted that isn't right."

For now, liberty brace for Fever circus and expected sellout in Brooklyn remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.