Liberty aren't celebrating beating Aces with WNBA Finals on the horizon

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The celebration was relatively muted given how long the Liberty had waited to exact revenge on the Aces for beating New York on its home court in last year's WNBA Finals.

Except Sunday's 76-62 victory wasn't exactly the moment the Liberty have dreamed about.

They are three victories from making that vision a reality and will have home-court advantage in the best-of-five series against the Connecticut Sun or Minnesota Lynx. The finals series begins Thursday.

“We went to the finals last year,” Breanna Stewart said. “We didn't do nothing.”

The Liberty have spent nearly a year using that finals loss to a short-handed Las Vegas team playing with a sharp focus in establishing the league's best record. Coming up two wins short of a championship won't be good enough this year.

So as satisfying as it was to beat the Aces, it's not the title.

The Liberty not only have last year's close call hanging in the shadows, but there also is the organization's oh-so-close history. New York went to the finals in three of the league's first four years and lost each time to the Houston Comets. Then the Liberty lost two years later to the Los Angeles Sparks.

Maybe this is the year they get it done.

One major advantage in wrapping up the series against Las Vegas in four games was it gives New York extra time to rest while the Sun and Lynx play a winner-takes-all Game 5 on Tuesday. Then the winner will have to travel from Minneapolis.

“This playoff schedule is extremely condensed,” Stewart said. “If you go to Game 5, you have one day to prepare for Game 1 of the finals. That's insane.”

Insane also might be an apt description of Brooklyn's Barclays Center, which is drawing large, energetic crowds sprinkled with celebrities, including noted courtside spectator Spike Lee.

Now that the Liberty are back in the finals, expect the buzz to grow even louder.

“I hope it's sold out,” Stewart said. “I hope it's 18,000. Home-court advantage is a real thing, especially when you get to this point because it's so loud that you can't hear. Especially for us in Game 3, it was so loud here (in Las Vegas) we could not hear, and that's toughness of going on the road.”

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

New York Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello calls out a play during the second half of a WNBA Semifinal basketball game, against the Las Vegas Aces Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ian Maule)

New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart (30) drives past Las Vegas Aces guard Chelsea Gray (12) during the second half of a WNBA Semifinal basketball game, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ian Maule)

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.

The Nobel Assembly said that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”

Ambrose performed the research that led to his prize at Harvard University. He is currently a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Rackham’s research was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, where he’s a professor of genetics, said Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee.

Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic.

The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.

The announcement launched this year’s Nobel prizes award season.

Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 14.

The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

FILE - A close-up view of a Nobel Prize medal at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - A bust of Alfred Nobel on display following a press conference at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP, File)