Tragic news: A crucial player’s retirement was announced by the New York Liberty head coach because he left his contract to sign a new one.
Late in January, Onquel Jones, a recent addition to the Liberty, noticed assistant general manager Ohemaa Nyanin’s eyes widening as she was wrapping up her exercise at the team’s Barclays Center practice facility. Courtney Vandersloot revealed on Twitter and Instagram that she will be traveling to New York to join Jones and the team’s other big offseason addition, Breanna Stewart.
Jones claims, “I just started screaming and going crazy in the gym.” “Just being incredibly excited about everything and going completely crazy.”
It was no accident that Brooklyn produced a superteam. With coach Sandy Brondello and general manager Jonathan Kolb scrawling their vision on whiteboards in the back offices of Barclays Center, the Liberty had meticulously planned for months, if not years.
The participants had planned with no less care, conniving over the ramifications in private family chats in Seattle, the Chicago suburbs, and Connecticut for months in a group text to figure out how to play together. Even so, for them to all end up together, dozens of insignificant moments needed to align perfectly.
LIBERTY FOR ALL: A picture of the New York Liberty, including Breanna Stewart, Courtney Vandersloot, Jonquel Jones, Sabrina Ionescu, and Betnijah Laney.
Visual aid created by Kevin McGivern
Ultimately, one team that missed the playoffs the previous season has three of the top ten players in the WNBA in terms of win shares since 2016.
The major names on that team—20th overall pick Sabrina Ionescu and All-Star guard Betnijah Laney—as well as a remarkable group of youthful talent—will enable New York to make the most of its new core for many years to come.
The Liberty now stand as the best player group to have ever formed on a WNBA team, and they have a real opportunity to win a professional basketball championship and return to New York for the first time since the Knicks did so in 1973.
And as the league gets ready to negotiate its next television contract, it has a diamond in its largest media market, just a few years after it was questioning whether it would have a team in New York at all.
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On paper, the fit appears to be ideal. Will it, however, be successful? Should it do so, then, in addition to winning a championship, the three stars will have changed the entire landscape of the WNBA.
That’s quite an accomplishment for a team that former owner Jim Dolan practically abandoned in 2017. He moved the Liberty from Madison Square Garden to the Westchester County Center, a high school arena in White Plains, as soon as he declared his intention to sell the team, casting doubt on the franchise’s future.
A route to prominence was provided by Joe and Clara Wu Tsai’s acquisition of the squad in January 2019. In addition, the Tsais controlled Barclays Center, which was crucial because it meant the Liberty would have access to a first-rate venue for play. That is not going to occur in 20.
