Freeport's Morgan Taylor a master at building basketball fan bases for the Liberty and Long Island Nets

Entering her senior year at Friends Academy, Morgan Taylor had big dreams.

As a junior in 2007, Taylor had helped lead Friends to its first Long Island Class C girls basketball championship, and the team was projected to have another big year. As fate would have it, though, early in that senior year, she tore a patella tendon.

“It was tough mentally,” Taylor recalled of the knee injury that ended her basketball playing career. “ . . . I gave up my hoop dreams on the court, but I knew that I wanted to be involved in sports. I knew I wanted to be involved in a women’s basketball program, and a strong women’s basketball program.”

The Freeport resident has done that — and more — as she pivoted from that early disappointment and worked her way up the ranks of the business side of sports.

Two years ago, she was named vice president of operations for the Long Island Nets, the G League Nets affiliate that plays at Nassau Coliseum. Taylor holds the same title for the New York Liberty, meaning she oversees event operations, merchandise and ticketing initiatives for both teams.

Taylor began her career in sports at George Washington University, where she majored in finance, was the manager of the women’s basketball team and had a six-month internship with the WNBA’s Washington Mystics.

Since then, she has gained a reputation as a bit of a “fixer,” someone adept at increasing a team’s fan base and generating sales.

Taylor first forged strong ties with Liberty fans when the team played at Madison Square Garden, where she led the WNBA in ticket sales revenue in 2015 and 2016. Her first big challenge, however, came when she was hired by the Las Vegas Aces as a sales manager before their inaugural season.

“We had to get people to buy into a whole new team in a city that then was not a sports city,” Taylor said. “It was a transient city and a female sport that was an unfamiliar experience . . . It gave me the experience to come back to New York and help build a brand in a new city.”

That brand was the Liberty, who despite being one of the original WNBA teams had fallen on hard times after the Madison Square Garden Company moved their home base to the Westchester County Center.

The team was acquired by Clara and Joe Tsai in 2019 with the intention of moving operations to Barclays Center, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced all teams to play inside the “wubble” — the WNBA’s isolation zone in Bradenton, Florida — in 2020.

Taylor was hired as director of business operations shortly before the team played its first season at Barclays in 2021. The challenges confronting the Liberty were immense, given that they were asking fans to come to a new arena that, because of COVID-19 restrictions, couldn’t be at full capacity, and fans were required to be vaccinated and tested. Taylor had to communicate with the WNBA and the city to coordinate the implementation of the restrictions, and she had to help communicate with the fans and make them comfortable with them.

“It was a challenging time for everyone involved,” said Shana Stephenson, the Liberty’s chief branding officer, who works closely with Taylor. “We had to reconnect with some lapsed fans and re-energize fans who, quite frankly, felt frustrated about the uncertainty . . . Morgan had pre-existing relationships with our fans. She wasn’t above picking up the phone and talking to fans to answer their questions.”

The Liberty — helped immensely by the addition of stars such as Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones — have flourished since moving to Barclays Center.

The team averaged 7,776 in home attendance two years ago and surged to 12,730 last season, second in the WNBA to Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever.

“Our biggest advantage is our fan base,” Ionescu said shortly before the Liberty won the first title in franchise history last season. “Having 18,000 fans that are loud, cheering, rowdy all game is just electric.”

The Long Island Nets have a long way to go before they can reach that. According to the Nets, the team averages 2,074 fans per game at Nassau Coliseum. A team spokesperson said the league average is approximately 3,000.

Taylor believes all the ingredients are there for the Nets to build a strong fan base. Having grown up on Long Island, she said she is excited to bring “fun affordable entertainment” to the community. It’s exactly the type of challenge she started preparing herself for years ago when she suffered that knee injury while playing high school basketball.

“I would say, dream big and don’t let people tell you ‘no,’ ” Taylor said when asked what advice she would have for a girl on Long Island today looking to get into the sports business. “It wasn’t always received well that I wanted to work in women’s sports or be an executive in men’s sports. I’m happy to say, it’s happening for me.”

By Barbara Barker

barbara.barker@newsday.commeanbarb

Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.