New York ? When the Los Angeles Sparks needed a second-half lift, they turned to their most reliable players.

Mwadi Mabika, Lisa Leslie and DeLisha Milton didn’t let their teammates down, and the Sparks are one win from their second straight WNBA title.

Mabika scored 20 points, Milton added 17 and Leslie had 15 to lead the Sparks to a 71-63 victory over the New York Liberty on Thursday night in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals.

Game 2 in the best-of-three series is Saturday in Los Angeles. The Liberty are 0-3 in WNBA Finals, losing all three times to Houston.

The Sparks won without starting guard Tamecka Dixon, who injured her back and knee coming off the team bus for the shootaround.

Sparks coach Michael Cooper said it will be a gametime decision whether the former Kansas standout can play in Game 2.

In Dixon’s place, Latasha Byears scored six points and grabbed 11 rebounds. Guard Nikki Teasley set a record for assists in a finals game with 11.

“With Dixon being unable to play, they went with their big lineup with Milton, Leslie and Byears,” Liberty coach Richie Adubato said.

“That big lineup caused us a lot of problems because we couldn’t rebound as well as we would have.”

After trailing by as many as nine points in the first half, the Sparks didn’t panic. Instead, Mabika, Leslie and Milton led a second-half surge.

“I knew that we had been here before, down by 10 and 15 and came back,” said Mabika, who scored 14 second-half points. “That’s the thing about us and the playoffs. We tried to keep the game close in the first half and then take the lead in the second half.”

That’s just what the Sparks did after going into the break tied at 35. They took a six-point lead with 11:48 to go and never faltered despite several Liberty attempts at a comeback. Los Angeles also shut down New York’s inside game.

Forward Tamika Whitmore, who averaged 12.7 points during the regular season, had just five points on 2-of-9 shooting. The Sparks outrebounded the Liberty 37-25.

The Liberty faces a difficult challenge if they are going to win their first WNBA championship in four tries. Only one team has lost Game 1 of the finals and gone on to win the championship Houston in 1998.