The WNBA semifinals opened with both higher seeds on the floor, and both of them got up slower than they went down. Atlanta took Game 1 from top-seeded New York 92-82. Golden State held the defending champion Aces to 60 points in a 71-60 win. Two openers, two road teams leaving with the series lead.
Atlanta's was the louder result. Jordin Canada put up 25, and the reporting out of the series says the turn came at halftime, with DeWanna Bonner delivering the kind of speech that veterans get exactly one chance a postseason to deliver and make stick. Bonner has been playing meaningful October basketball since she won in Phoenix as a rookie in 2009, with another one in 2014. You cannot coach that resume into a locker room. You can only hope you have it.
Sabrina Ionescu scored a game-high 27 and then spent her night talking about everyone else, specifically where her teammates were standing and how to get them better looks. That is a point guard's answer, not an alibi. The Liberty did not get beaten by one player's bad night. They got beaten by spacing and intensity, and both of those are fixable in 48 hours.
The Golden State story is the one I keep rereading. Natalie Nakase collapsed from exhaustion in the previous round. She was back on the bench for Game 1 against the team whose staff she came up through, and her defense turned the champs into a 60-point offense. Gabby Williams went for 25 and 11. In a league where the semifinal floor is usually decided by who can still generate a clean shot in the fourth, Golden State simply refused to hand one over.
What comes next is Wednesday. New York goes back to Atlanta at 7:30 ET, and Las Vegas visits Golden State at 9:30 ET, two teams built for exactly this moment now staring at an 0-2 hole if they do not solve something fast. I am watching two things: whether Atlanta's veterans can summon that fire a second straight game, which is far harder than the first, and whether the Aces can manufacture any interior offense against a defense that just took their best stuff away.