Plenette Pierson sat visibly rattled in the Liberty locker room, still on the verge of tears. She was one of three Liberty players involved in a car accident today before the Liberty’s 79-58 loss to Atlanta. And throughout the game and even afterward, Pierson couldn’t shake feelings of fear.
Three Liberty players and two assistant coaches were involved in two separate car accidents that occurred before the loss in front of 5,725 at the Prudential Center. It was a distraction that hindered the Liberty in their worst performance of the season at home.
“No, I honestly say I couldn’t,” Pierson said, when asked if she was able to settle down during the game. “My teammates were trying, but I just couldn’t. ... No matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t shake it.”
The team’s first trip to Newark from each member’s respective home — they flew into Newark on Saturday and stayed in a hotel — began with disaster. As rain fell on the road, the Liberty’s Alex Montgomery rear-ended Pierson’s Chevy Tahoe after Montgomery was rear-ended by another skidding car. Teammate Jessica Breland was also in Montgomery’s car.
In an unrelated incident, the team’s assistant coaches, Monique Ambers and Lady Grooms, were also involved in an accident.
All those involved are physically fine, but the mental effects were obvious.
“That feeling, especially to have it right before the game ... ” Pierson said. “I got here maybe an hour before the game was about to start, so I never had time to calm down and gather myself.”
It carried over into the Liberty’s play, as they were never able to find a rhythm on either end of the court in the blowout loss to the Dream (1-3). It was the second defeat in a row for the Liberty (2-2) after they started out the season winning their first two on the road.
This loss was marked by the Liberty’s inability to put up points against statistically the worst defense in the WNBA.
Aside from former Rutgers standouts Kia Vaughn and Essence Carson, the rest of the Liberty couldn’t figure out Atlanta’s hounding man-to-man defense. Vaughn and Carson combined to shoot 16-of-31, while the rest of the Liberty shot a putrid 23.7 percent (9-of-38).
“That was a poor effort,” Liberty head coach John Whisenant said. “I’m embarrassed about the way we played.”
Whisenant acknowledged the unusual effect the accident had on his team, but he refused to use it as an excuse for their poor play. He said the organization would likely look into hiring a professional driver to bring the entire team to games instead of having members split up and drive themselves.
“When you get distracted from that, that’s why coaches try to control the day of the game so stringently,” Whisenant said. “We didn’t have that.”
After the Liberty found themselves down 12 at the half, the frustration only mounted in the second.
And so, as the third quarter wound down, Montgomery let out a large yelp of frustration. She drove to the hoop with the clock winding down, rushing her shot and hitting the bottom of the rim. The ball ricocheted off her out of bounds.
Said Montgomery: “Yeah, just one of those days.”
Brett LoGiurato: blogiurato@starledger.com