The New York Liberty are in the playoffs . It didn’t happen how they wanted or how anyone who follows the league could have expected, but they’re in the field.

As the 5 seed, New York will open its best-of-three first-round series against the Phoenix Mercury in the desert on Sunday afternoon. The bad news for the Liberty is that they lost three out of four games to the Mercury in the regular season.

The good news? The current Liberty team is so different that the regular season matchups really don’t mean much.

For one thing, Emma Meesseman only played in one of those games. The 2019 WNBA Finals MVP will likely come off the bench on arguably the most talented roster in the playoffs — even if the Liberty haven’t lived up to it for most of the season.

And to that point, the Mercury ha

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