Kia Nurse
(Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

New York Liberty All-Star Kia Nurse came up big in her overseas duties, scoring the game-winning basket in the 2020 WNBL grand final. 

A New Yorker beat the Flyers, but ice and skates were nowhere to be found.

New York Liberty guard Kia Nurse ended her 2020 Australian tour on the perfect note. The 2019 WNBA All-Star hit the game-winning three-pointer for the Canberra Capitals to win the WNBL grand final. Nurse’s victorious triple gave the Capitals a 71-68 win and their second consecutive WNBL title. They needed only two games to take a best-of-three set from the Southside Flyers.

“It was the most open I’d been all game so I had to knock it down,” Nurse remarked to CBC after the game. “I’ve been in a lot of different leagues and on a lot of different teams but this team just never gives up. They don’t understand what the term ‘optional’ means, they never take a rest.”

Nurse got knocked in the heat of the moment but returned to her feet to score the last of her 18 points off an assist from series MVP Kelsey Griffin. Canberra had won the first game of the series 82-80 behind Nurse’s team-high 19 points. Her championship heroics were the finishing touches on an MVP season. Nurse led the WNBL with 20.9 points per game and accompanied that with averages of 4.3 rebounds and 2.8 assists.

“It was a masterstroke getting someone like Kia who is an international superstar of the basketball world,” Canberra head coach Paul Goriss told Eamonn Tiernan of Fox Sports.

Nurse will return to New York this spring for her third season of WNBA service. She put up averages of 13.7 points and 2.3 assists during her sophomore campaign. She thus earned a starting role in the WNBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas.

New York opens its 2020 season on May 16 against the Connecticut Sun.

Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags