Breanna Stewart and the Liberty look to bounce back and even WNBA Finals series against the Lynx

NEW YORK (AP) — Breanna Stewart and her New York Liberty teammates were confident they can rebound from the Game 1 collapse that put them down a game to Minnesota in the WNBA Finals.

Stewart said she watched the free throw she missed at the end of regulation which would have won the game for New York a few times to see if anything was off with her form. She came to the conclusion it wasn't and that sometimes shots just don't fall.

“I’m on to the next, you know, what happened happened, moving forward because this is a series and my team team needs me,” she said.

The two-time MVP and her teammates will need to be at their best on Sunday when they face the Lynx in Game 2 of the best-of-five series.

“We have to have short-term memory get it out of our system really quick and get ready for another battle,” Stewart said at practice Saturday. “We came in yesterday addressing things, today addressing things and just really, fine tuning and getting ready to go again. We’re all kind of yearning for another opportunity."

Stewart said a bunch of people reached out to her after the 95-93 overtime loss Thursday including former teammate Sue Bird. They had a common thread in their messaging.

“Bounce back,” she said.

Guard Sabrina Ionescu, who struggled from the field against Minnesota, said that there is no panic in the team after the loss that saw New York blow a 15-point lead in the final five minutes.

“It’s a crappy way to lose, but I think understanding, like a lot of that stuff’s in our control to come out and be able to change it and, you know, not panicking,” she said. “I mean, it’s one game and understanding we got an opportunity tomorrow to come out and be better.”

Despite getting the win, the Lynx know that they can play a lot better Sunday before the series shifts to Minnesota for Game 3 on Wednesday.

“It’s one game, it’s a long series. We’re definitely not coming into this thinking we have this thing won,” said Minnesota forward Napheesa Collier. “We understand what happened in Game 1. We were able to steal that game, but it means nothing. It means they’re going to come out even hungrier in Game 2 and it’s going to be a battle just like it was the first night. And we definitely want to start out better and play better as a team throughout the game so that we’re not in that position.”

Collier and teammate Courtney Williams were huge down the stretch of regulation and in overtime for the Lynx. Williams knows the team has a lot to improve on.

“There were so many different things that we could have done better but I’m so happy we can get into the gym today and work on it,” said Williams, who hit a four-point play with 5.5 seconds left in regulation to give the Lynx their first lead of the game.

Game 1 drew a huge audience with an average of 1.14 million viewers tuning it. It was the most watched WNBA Finals opener ever and ranked as the most-watched Finals contest since Game 3 of the 2003 championship round between Los Angeles and Detroit.

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

Minnesota Lynx's Napheesa Collier, center, attempts to score against New York Liberty's Leonie Fiebich, left, and Breanna Stewart, right during the second half in Game 1 of a WNBA basketball final playoff series, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart wrestles a rebound away from Las Vegas Aces forward Alysha Clark and guard Chelsea Gray during the second half of a WNBA Semifinal basketball game, 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)

Players react after a foul is called in the last seconds of the second half in Game 1 of a WNBA basketball final playoff series between the New York Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

New York Liberty's Breanna Stewart (30) reacts after missing a free throw during the second half in Game 1 of a WNBA basketball final playoff series against the Minnesota Lynx, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Back in 2016, a scientific research organization incorporated in Delaware and based in Mountain View, California, applied to be recognized as a tax-exempt charitable organization by the Internal Revenue Service.

Called OpenAI, the nonprofit told the IRS its goal was to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”

Its assets included a $10 million loan from one of its four founding directors and now CEO, Sam Altman.

The application, which nonprofits are required to disclose and which OpenAI provided to The Associated Press, offers a view back in time to the origins of the artificial intelligence giant that has since grown to include a for-profit subsidiary recently valued at $157 billion by investors.

It's one measure of the vast distance OpenAI — and the technology that it researches and develops — has traveled in under a decade.

In the application, OpenAI indicated it did not plan to enter into any joint ventures with for-profit organizations, which it has since done. It also said it did “not plan to play any role in developing commercial products or equipment,” and promised to make its research freely available to the public.

A spokesperson for OpenAI, Liz Bourgeois, said in an email that the organization’s missions and goals have remained constant, though the way it’s carried out its mission has evolved alongside advances in technology. She also said the nonprofit does not carry out any commercial activities.

Attorneys who specialize in advising nonprofits have been watching OpenAI's meteoric rise and its changing structure closely. Some wonder if its size and the scale of its current ambitions have reached or exceeded the limits of how nonprofits and for-profits may interact. They also wonder the extent to which its primary activities advance its charitable mission, which it must, and whether some may privately benefit from its work, which is prohibited.

In general, nonprofit experts agree that OpenAI has gone to great lengths to arrange its corporate structure to comply with the rules that govern nonprofit organizations. OpenAI's application to the IRS appears typical, said Andrew Steinberg, counsel at Venable LLP and a member of the American Bar Association’s nonprofit organizations committee.

If the organization’s plans and structure changed, it would need to report that information on its annual tax returns, Steinberg said, which it has.

“At the time that the IRS reviewed the application, there wasn’t information that that corporate structure that exists today and the investment structure that they pursued was what they had in mind,” he said. “And that’s okay because that may have developed later.”

Here are some highlights from the application:

At inception, OpenAI's research plans look quaint in light of the race to develop AI that was in part set off by its release of ChatGPT in 2022.

OpenAI told the IRS it planned to train an AI agent to solve a wide variety of games. It aimed to build a robot to perform housework and to develop a technology that could “follow complex instructions in natural language.”

Today, its products, which include text-to-image generators and chatbots that can detect emotion and write code, far exceed those technical thresholds.

The nonprofit OpenAI indicated on the application form that it had no plans to enter into joint ventures with for-profit entities.

It also wrote, “OpenAI does not plan to play any role in developing commercial products or equipment. It intends to make its research freely available to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis.”

OpenAI spokesperson Bourgeois said the organization believes the best way to accomplish its mission is to develop products that help people use AI to solve problems, including many products it offers for free. But they also believe developing commercial partnerships has helped further their mission, she said.

OpenAI reported to the IRS in 2016 that regularly sharing its research “with the general public is central to the mission of OpenAI. OpenAI will regularly release its research results on its website and share software it has developed with the world under open source software licenses.”

It also wrote it “intends to retain the ownership of any intellectual property it develops.”

The value of that intellectual property and whether it belongs to the nonprofit or for-profit subsidiary could become important questions if OpenAI decides to alter its corporate structure, as Altman confirmed in September it was considering.

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

FILE - The OpenAI logo appears on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen with random binary data, March 9, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)