Basketball is not a sport, it's a way of life.

Finals game one stats dive, A'ja always comes up Aces, Sabrina keeps her three-point hand strong...

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• Over the course of her still relatively young WNBA career, New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu has managed to impress more than just Steph Curry with her three-point prowess. As of yesterday, in a game where her team-high 24 points helped her Liberty squad hand the Connecticut Sun their first loss of the season, Ionescu became the fastest player in WNBA history to reach 300 career three-pointers made when she splashed her first of two threes in the game. The Liberty’s fifth-year guard, who is currently averaging 17.2 points per contest this year, is coming off her best season from distance, having made a league-record 128 threes, while shooting a Curry-like 44.8% on 3.6 makes per game—all career highs. Not to mention, the absolute show-stopping performance at last season’s WNBA All-Star break, where Ionescu scored 37 of a possible 40 points on her way to winning the WNBA’s three-point contest. While her 2.5 makes and 33% this year are more in line with what she has shot in her other three seasons, anyone who has watched Ionescu play knows that her combination of difficulty and distance makes her one of the most dangerous shooters the league has seen.

  Of course, Ionescu still has a very long way to go if she hopes to catch Diana Taurasi’s league-record 1,393 threes made—which stands a whopping 742 over Kristi Toliver in second place (651)—but were Ionescu to maintain her pace of 2.6 made bombs per contest, she could get there in 420 more games. The only problem is, the ageless Taurasi, who hit seven threes last Sunday in a win over the Sparks, continues to move the goalpost. To Sabrina’s benefit in the chase, for most of Taurasi’s career the league only played 34 games a season, before changing to 36 in ’22 and then again to 40 in ’23. And with the rapidly growing popularity of the league and the addition of expansion franchises in San Francisco and Toronto over the next two years, it’s reasonable to believe that the W will likely increase the number of games again sometime in the near future, giving Ionescu a bit of an advantage in the hunt for Taurasi’s record. Though, as Steph knows following their hotly contested three-point exhibition during the NBA All-Star break, in which Ionescu opted to shoot from the men’s line, Sabrina isn’t looking for any help. Whether she reaches Taurasi’s record will remain to be seen, but what isn’t in doubt is that by the time it’s all said and done, Ionescu will go down as one of the WNBA’s greatest long-range gunners. (hover mouse over bars to see stats)

• After unpacking a wild Game One of the NBA Finals, there were some interesting stats that warrant keeping an eye on as the series continues to unfold:

  -   The Celtics became just the 15^th team in league history to make 16 or more threes in a Finals game. Of the other 14 teams, nine of those teams (64.2%) won the title. But if we pull that thread a little further and add what Boston did defensively with nine blocks, only the 2019 Toronto Raptors—17 blocks, 10 threes made in a Game 3 victory over GSW—have had a comparable performance of shooting prowess and defensive excellence.

  -   Speaking of three-point prowess, Boston shot 38.1% from distance in Game One, on the way to becoming the first team in Finals history to have seven players make at least two threes:

  • White: 3-8

  • Tatum: 3-7

  • Brown: 2-6

  • Horford: 2-5

  • Holiday: 2-5

  • Porziņģis: 2-4

  • Hauser: 2-2

  -   Dallas, on the other hand, became one of just 16 teams to attempt 25 or more threes and shoot less than 26% in a Finals game, with only five (31%) of those teams able to withstand that poor of shooting from distance and still pull out a victory.

  -   Dallas also became one of only 23 teams in league history with nine assists or fewer in a Finals game. Unsurprisingly, only six of those teams managed to win the game in which ball movement and shot-making were that poor. Worse still, with their 11 turnovers, the Mavs became one of only three teams to have that few assists with ten or more turnovers in a Finals game—of course, all three instances were losses.

  What does all of this mean? Probably that I have too much time on my hands. But separate of that, the combination of three-point shooting variance for both teams, and ball movement for Dallas, will likely—and unsurprisingly—have a major impact on what this series looks like going forward.

• As many of you know, I’m an avid Las Vegas Aces fan, so I’ll accept the notion that perhaps I have moments of bias where players on the team are concerned—just ask me about Kate Martin. However, when it comes to two-time WNBA MVP (’20 & ’22) A’ja Wilson, no personal prejudice is necessary, as her greatness is objectively irrefutable. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Wilson has had herself quite a week—with still one game remaining today against the Los Angeles Sparks. On Wednesday, the reigning back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year became the first player in WNBA history to log a game with at least 35 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 steals when she dropped 36, 12, and 6 in a win against the Dallas Wings. Then on Friday, in a loss to the Seattle Storm, Wilson tied Diana Taurasi for the WNBA record for consecutive games scoring 20 or more points at 13. Here’s a look at the 15 longest streaks of 20 or more points in WNBA history: