Liberty have come long way for a WNBA title, so why not aim for dynasty?
The Westchester County Center is a creaky, old multipurpose arena 25 miles north of Manhattan in the city of White Plains. Over the years, it has hosted such events as the Westchester Cat Show, the Hot Tub Swim Show Expo and the Blood and Ink Tattoo Horror Convention.
As recently as 2019, the arena also hosted the WNBA home games for the Liberty, who totaled only 10 wins that season while drawing an average of 2,239 fans.
Fast-forward five years and it is mind-boggling to see where the Liberty are today. They are getting ready for a ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes after clinching the franchise’s first WNBA championship with a Game 5 overtime win in front of a sellout crowd of 18,090 at Barclays Center.
The magnitude of it all was just settling in on Sunday night when Liberty coach Sandy Brondello, series MVP Jonquel Jones, team leader Breanna Stewart and Game 5 X-factor Nyara Sabally entered the postgame news conference carrying giant bottles of champagne and wearing protective goggles on their heads.
Though everyone there clearly was enjoying themselves, there was a moment when Brondello hinted that the team may be greedier than anyone thought. “It was a journey. It’s been fun,” she said. “Hey, let’s not stop at one, though. Let’s go for two.”
Two? Are the Liberty — a franchise that took 28 years to win its first title — looking to become a dynasty?
If they hadn’t come so far since Joe and Clara Tsai bought the team and moved it to Brooklyn, this notion after winning their first title would be absurd.
Yet this is a team that has made a number of shrewd moves to get to where it is. The Liberty drafted Sabrina Ionescu and gave her time to develop. Then, in a near-historical offseason, the Liberty became the first team in the league to use free agency to put together a superteam and become a contender.
General manager Jonathan Kolb was able to bring in two former MVPs in Stewart and Jonquel Jones and then add veteran point guard Courtney Vandersloot. While the concept of the superteam has fallen out of vogue in the NBA — thanks in part to the Nets’ Kyrie Irving/ Kevin Durant/James Harden debacle — it’s worked pretty well for the Liberty.
Last season, they made it all the way to the WNBA Finals before losing to Las Vegas in four games. This season, they made it a mission to go a step further and made the key addition of German rookie Leonie Fiebich, who eventually became a starter.
The Liberty finished the regular season with a league-best record of 32-8. They knocked two-time defending champion Las Vegas out in the semifinals.
Then, in the Finals against Minnesota, they showed tremendous resilience in Game 2 after blowing a 15-point lead with five minutes to go in Game 1. Three games and one crazy buzzer-beater by Ionescu later, the Liberty were hosting a winner-take-all Game 5.
It’s fair to say that Game 5 alone was not a great advertisement for the league, given that it was an extremely low-scoring affair with a lot of missed shots. (Stewart was 4-for-15 and Ionescu 1-for-19.) Still, helped by their role players and a controversial call that sent Stewart to the line at the end of regulation, the Liberty finally were able to win their fans a title.
“Congratulations to the Liberty on their first championship,” Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve said afterward in a tone that clearly showed she was ticked off. “It took them 28 years, congrats to them. We were that close to our fifth. It just didn’t happen.”
Reeve built a dynasty in Minnesota, winning championships in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017. If the Liberty want to add more championships to their resume, they are going to have to make some decisions this offseason.
Those decisions will be complicated by the addition of an expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries. The league will hold an expansion draft in December to feed players to Golden State with each team having the right to protect six players. While it’s a safe assumption that Kolb will protect the starting five, there are several players who could be a part of that sixth spot including Sabally who kept her team in Game 5 when she came off the bench to score 13 points and grab seven rebounds.
And, while the Liberty can only prepare for one season at a time, things could get more complicated after next season as the WNBA Players Association opted out of its contract Monday. Any new contract would go into effect after the 2025 season.
For now, the Liberty players aren’t thinking much further ahead than Thursday’s parade.
“To be able to bring a championship to New York, first ever in franchise history, it’s an incredible feeling,” Stewart said. “I literally can’t wait to continue to celebrate with the city because I know it’s going to be bonkers.”
Certainly a lot more bonkers than a parade through downtown White Plains would be.
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.
