Sabrina Ionescu, Liberty starters deliver in win over Washington Mystics

The Liberty have one of the WNBA’s best starting fives, and that was the difference in Friday night’s closer-than-the-final-score-appeared 90-79 win over the Washington Mystics at Barclays Center.

Sabrina Ionescu scored 24 points and Kayla Thornton had 20. Breanna Stewart recorded her 79th career double-double with 18 points and 15 rebounds. Jonquel Jones added 16 points and 10 rebounds.

The starting five of Ionescu, Thornton, Stewart, Jones and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton had 86 of the 90 points for the Liberty (6-2), who dropped the WNBA-worst Mystics to 0-8.

“We have one-through-five who] are able to go out there and knock down shots,” Ionescu said.

After building a 17-point lead, the Liberty trailed 75-74 after Aaliyah Edwards’ layup with 4:59 left before finishing the game with a 16-4 run.

What concerned the Liberty is that they found themselves in a possession-by-possession fight in the fourth quarter.

“Getting stops,” Ionescu said was the key to the game-ending spurt. “Stops lead to scores for us. We know we can put the ball in the basket and I think just that commitment for those three to five minutes played a huge role in how this game turned out.”

But when will the Liberty start knocking down more three-point shots?

Sitting at the podium two hours before tipoff, Liberty coach Sandy Brondello expressed faith that her team will find its shooting touch from beyond the arc and be among the WNBA’s best by the time the season is over.

Then the Liberty proved they remain a work in progress, hitting 11 of 32 three-point attempts (34.4%). They entered the day ranked 11th out of 12 teams at 30.1%.

So, progress, but still a lot of work to do.

“We just keep emphasizing that ‘just watch out when we do start making some open ones,’ ” Brondello said. “Uncharacteristically, we’ve missed a lot of open looks. But we know we’re capable of making them. We want them to be aggressive but we want them to be great shots. If they’re not there, we still talk about good-to-great [shots]; don’t force shots that are not there.”

When asked directly by Newsday if she is comfortable with the quality of shots the Liberty have taken this season, Brondello said, “For the most part we’ve had pretty good [to] great shots but not always. And the threes that we’ve missed, most of them have been open. I can say in the last game I think we took three bad threes.”

Ariel Atkins led the Mystics with 15 points. Liberty guard Courtney Vandersloot missed the game with back tightness.

The game marked the first time Stefanie Dolson and DiDi Richards played against their former team at Barclays after the duo signed with the Mystics during the offseason.

Dolson received an ovation from the sellout crowd of 9,878 during pregame introductions. The Liberty aired tribute videos for both players during stoppages in play.