Becky Hammon likens Liberty to 2014 champion Spurs

From her spot at the news conference table underneath Barclays Center, Becky Hammon attempted to dissect what went wrong — and has kept going wrong — for her Aces.

Their one-game deficit against the Liberty in a best-of-five WNBA semifinal had just doubled Tuesday.

Their quest for a three-peat went from hitting a Game 1 roadblock to having a possible remaining shelf life of 40 game minutes.

Maybe, Hammon said, it was because the Aces “haven’t had the edge” for most of the season.

Maybe it’s because the entire WNBA “has been pissed off for the last eight months” or that Hammon’s players starred in commercials and are “frickin’ celebrities” and, due to what she called human nature, simply got distracted.

But then Hammon traveled back a decade.

Back to the 2013-14 NBA season, when she was recovering from a torn ACL that ended her San Antonio Stars campaign after one game and spending time around the Spurs.

Back to a year before she retired and shifted into a trailblazing role on Gregg Popovich’s staff.

Hammon witnessed the Spurs recover from a heartbreaking loss in the 2013 Finals, make it back to that same spot — against that same Heat team — 12 months later and, this time, cruise to a title.

That, to a degree, has been the Liberty in this season and this series, contributing to what’s at stake in Game 3 on Friday with the Liberty one win from a return trip to the Finals.

“They should’ve walked away with the title that year,” Hammon said of the Spurs. “They lost it that year. The next year, they came back. They came back with so much drive, so much discipline, so much focus that there was no way somebody was beating them in 2014. I mean, that ball was popping.

“But they took a huge loss. Liberty took a huge loss last year, and I liken it to that a little bit where they had it, they felt like they had it and we walked away with it. I did think we were the better team, but we were dealt a really frickin’ tough hand last year in the Finals … so I’m sure they feel like something was stolen a little bit.”

In 2013, the Spurs were seconds away from winning Game 6 and starting a celebration when LeBron James missed a 3-pointer and Ray Allen converted a second-chance shot from beyond the arc.

That prompted overtime. Miami’s win prompted Game 7. And instead, the Heat popped champagne bottles.

Popovich, former Stars coach Dan Hughes recalled, didn’t hesitate to use the 2013 Finals film as a starting point that preseason, when most of his core remained intact.

And in the build-up to the campaign, Hammon asked Hughes in her exit interview if the Spurs would be OK with her attending practices.

“You have my number, give it to Becky and have her give me a call,” Hughes recalled Popovich replying.

Hammon sat in on coaches meetings that year.

She watched home games from behind the bench. Hughes always knew she had the potential to coach, and Hammon observed the group rip off 62 wins and get their NBA Finals revenge.

“She wasn’t official,” Hughes told The Post, “but she was at everything. … So her equation to [the Liberty] is pretty insightful.”

Just over 10 years later, the Liberty had a chance to force a Game 5, even after the Aces built a six-point lead with 1:27 remaining.

Breanna Stewart passed up a last-second, game-winning shot. Courtney Vandersloot’s last-second, game-winning shot didn’t fall.

Las Vegas escaped, and the ripple effects lingered into the offseason when diagnosing areas that needed improvement.

“I see some similar traits [to Popovich] out of New York, just to be honest with you,” Hughes said. “Same thing. I don’t think they saw that completely as, OK, this is failure. … They took it as learning, like, OK, we had to learn how to be champions.”

Risks do exist when trying to run it back, as the Liberty did with their nucleus.

Everything, including health, needs to unfold perfectly all over again.

One run to the Finals doesn’t guarantee another.

With one more win against the Aces, the Liberty would become just the eighth team to lose in the WNBA Finals and make it back again the following year.

Only three — the Mystics in 2019, the Lynx in 2017 and 2013 — ended the return trip as champions.

The last time the latter scenario happened in the NBA, it involved the Spurs. It involved Popovich’s 2013-14 roster.

And from afar — but from really quite up-close — it involved Hammon.

She understands the Liberty’s last 12 months perhaps better than anyone.