Liberty star Breanna Stewart plans to play through MCL sprain in Game 2 vs. Mercury

Fiifi Frimpong, New York Daily News on Sep 17, 2025

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NEW YORK — Breanna Stewart plans to play in Wednesday night’s Game 2 against the Phoenix Mercury at Barclays Center, “barring anything crazy.”

Stewart told reporters Wednesday that she sustained an MCL sprain in the Liberty’s Game 1 overtime win in this WNBA first-round playoff series. She said she wanted to give the knee a go at shootaround before making a decision on her Game 2 status.

On Monday, she learned that her MRI results showed “no crazy injuries in there.”

“I just want to make sure that I don’t wake up from my nap and feel like s---,” Stewart said hours before Wednesday’s Game 2.

The two-time WNBA MVP said she was “scared” when she first injured her knee, but, “I’m very happy to have gotten my MRI results back and know that it’s something that I can play through depending on how much pain I want to be in.”

When asked to describe her level of pain, Stewart said “I’m OK,” and scaled the pain to “a three.”

She doesn’t plan on being on a minutes restriction.

“No, I don’t know. No minutes restriction. I don’t like that,” the star said.

“That’s a tough motherf-----,” teammate Natasha Cloud said of Stewart at shootaround.

After initially sustaining the injury in Game 1, Stewart attempted to stay in the game with three minutes left in overtime.

“When I when I first got up, I was like, ‘OK, I’m not feeling as bad as I thought I would be feeling,' ” she said. She missed an and-1 free throw and exited the game a minute later with the Liberty leading by seven points.

“Anything laterally was not as enjoyable. And I felt like we were in a good spot where I told [head coach] Sandy [Brondello] like ‘I need to come out,' ” she said.

With Stewart playing through the sprain, the 6-4 forward is willing to deal with the risk of making the injury worse.

“I think the thing is with injuries, there’s probably always a chance, you know, so I’m like I’m willing to take that because I want to be out with my team. And they told me that, like structurally, everything looks OK. So my plan is to go.”