5 things to know about Sabrina Ionescu, the Liberty guard who sank the Lynx on Wednesday night

Friday is do or die for the Lynx if Napheesa Collier, Courtney Williams and the rest of the gang have any hope of securing the championship.

They lost Game 3 of the WNBA Finals to the New York Liberty 80-77 at Target Center on Wednesday. After the Lynx led fby double digits for much of the first half of the game, New York caught up in the third and fourth quarters in a rally that culminated with a clutch three-point dagger by guard Sabrina Ionescu to close things out.

The Lynx must now win at Target Center on Friday, otherwise the Liberty wins the title.

So who is the University of Oregon alum who put the Lynx on the defense for the final home game of the postseason? Here are five things to know about her:

Ionescu would have been a top-tier prospect for the 2019 WNBA Draft. But instead of leaving the Oregon women’s basketball team after her junior year to chase her dream of playing in the pros, Ionescu chose to return in hopes of leading the Ducks to their first NCAA title.

Oregon “lost big” in the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament in 2017, Ionescu wrote in a column for the Players Tribune. The team “lost close” the following year and made the Final Four in 2019.

“I won’t predict exactly how far we’re going to go … but I’ll just say this,” Ionescu wrote after announcing her intent to play a final season, adding, “We have unfinished business.”

The Ducks never got to finish that business. The NCAA canceled the postseason tournament two weeks before it was scheduled to begin, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both the Lynx and Liberty are chasing historic titles.

Minnesota would set a league record if it wins this series — the Lynx would become the first WNBA team to ever win five championships. The Liberty have made it to the finals on five occasions. They lost to the Las Vegas Aces in Game 4 of the 2023 championship series 70-69.

Of the 12 teams in the WNBA, only three still play in the city they were founded in. The Liberty are the only member of that club, which includes the Phoenix Mercury and the Los Angeles Sparks, that have yet to win a championship.

They say game recognizes game. And Kobe Bryant, the late Lakers legend, identified Ionescu as the perfect mentor for his daughter Gigi as she began exploring her interest in basketball in 2019.

The Bryants sat courtside when the Ducks took on the USC Trojans in Los Angeles on Jan. 11 of that year. The family visited Ionescu in the locker room after the game and seeded an enduring friendship that culminated in a generational cascade of mentorship. Kobe Bryant recruited Ionescu to help coach Gianna’s basketball team in Los Angeles. Ionescu, in turn, worked with one of the NBA legends who inspired her.

Kobe and Gianna tragically died in a helicopter crash one year later. Ionescu spoke at their memorial service.

“I wanted to be just like him, to love every part of the competition, to be the first to show up and the last to leave, to love the grind, to be your best when you don’t feel your best and make other people around you the best version of themselves,” Ionescu said. “And to wake up and do it again the next day.”

In her final season with the Ducks, Ionescu became the first NCAA Division I basketball player to record more then 2,000 career points, 1,000 assists and 1,000 rebounds. She dedicated the performance that put her over the edge to Bryant. “That was for him,” she told ESPN.

“I can’t really put it into words,” Ionescu said. “He’s looking down and really proud of me and just really happy for this moment with my team.”

Ionescu has made more three-pointers during the regular season than any other WNBA player in history.

She clinched that honor during a 96-89 victory of the Sparks in 2023 when Ionescu sank her 124th three-pointer of the season, breaking the record set by Diana Taurasi in 2006 and eventually scoring 128 before the playoffs. Ionescu, like the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark and the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry, is part of an emerging and dominating trend in professional basketball, as more and more athletes intensely focus on shooting daggers from midcourt to clinch their games.

Ionescu’s clutch three might give Minnesota basketball fans deja vu. It was reminiscent of the three-pointer Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks sank in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals to win that game 109-108 and put the Timberwolves on their heels. The Mavs ended up winning the series 4-1.

Ducks fly together.

Ionescu married NFL player Hroniss Grasu earlier this year; he’s a former Las Vegas Raiders center who spent four years playing football at Oregon. Grasu was a member of the only Ducks football team to make it to the national championship under the College Football Playoff structure in 2014.

Vanessa and Natalia Bryant attended the couple’s wedding in March.