New York Stars Define ‘Liberty Basketball’

When fourth quarter rallies at Barclays Center are interrupted by media timeouts, the New York Liberty’s hype team leads fans in the team’s pop-inspired fight song. It’s a tune carried over from the franchise’s Madison Square Garden days, one armed with a chorus that spells out the team’s nickname.

That perhaps saves fans a trip to the dictionary, where they’ll never find the definition of “liberty” adjusted for New York’s seafoam savants. Those leading the way took a stab at it through a fateful week, one that set a countdown on the first halves of the 2024 WNBA season.

The concept of “Liberty basketball” came through one of New York’s rare misfires this season, when a fourth quarter slump and history from rookie sensation Caitlin Clark led to a defeat in Indianapolis. Point guard Sabrina Ionescu, the longest-tenured New Yorker, was asked by Jackie Powell of The Next if Clark and the Indiana Fever took away the sense of “Liberty basketball” that had sustained the team over the first literal half of the season, one that yielded a franchise record 17 victories.

Ionescu insisted that New York indeed played Liberty basketball and simply fell short in a “Super Bowl game” for the developing Fever. That begs the question: what exactly Liberty basketball, and how is it defined in this fateful journey?

Reigning WNBA MVP needed but one word to pull off the feat.

“My definition of liberty basketball is just toughness,” Stewart said. “No matter what the challenge is, no matter the adversity we face, like having three back-to-backs, what it is, we continue to fight through. We don’t want to take any excuses.”

New York’s top representatives took a stab at such clarity in the final pre-Olympic quartet, updating the term as they closed on a league-best record that would ensure that the path to the championship primarily ran through Barclays Center … whose visitors play an equally vital role in opposing shutdowns.

“I think we’re playing really good basketball,” Jonquel Jones said. “I think we’re playing hard and I think that when teams come in here, they know that it’s going to be a tough place to play, not just because of us but because of the fans. I think New York basketball in general is just being tough and doing whatever needs to be done to kind of win and in being resilient no matter what you’re going through. I think, so far, our team has kind of embodied that.”

“I think playing 40 minutes of tough, gritty basketball is really kind of what we hang our hat on on both sides of the floor, making sure we play the right way,” Ionescu later offered. “I think (that Indiana game) was a little uncharacteristic in terms of things felt a little clunky. Offensive, defensively, we weren’t really locked in. But in (other) games, you can tell that we stay on a string. We continue to grind it out, find ways to win, and continue to use all our strengths to our advantages and have a great outside/inside game.”

Non-verbal examples have been readily available on the court before the team went its Olympian ways.

Since that loss in Indianapolis, New York (21-4) put up four consecutive wins to wrap up the WNBA’s pre-Olympic slate, establishing a formidable 2.5-game lead in the chase for the top seed in the upcoming playoffs. Wins over their closest competition, the Connecticut Sun, sandwiched a home-and-home sweep of the Chicago Sky, who won the first two get-togethers of the campaign (including a 48-point preseason shellacking that unofficially opened the tour).

In its broadest, most-timed honored definition, the Liberty franchise could be described as resilient: two decades of general consistency gave way to extinction nearly brought about by the separation from an NBA brother (which previously befell franchises in Charlotte, Houston, and Sacramento). The light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be star power.

New York continues to boast one of the most electrifying rotations in men’s and women’s basketball: the additions of Jones, Stewart, and Courtney Vandersloot are now well-known to metropolitan audiences, with that assembly of All-Stars brought together alongside seafoam incumbents Ionescu and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton.

No New Yorker under a certain age needs to be (re)told that with great power comes great responsibility. The Liberty dutifully embraced both last season, which yielded both a Commissioner’s Cup title and the franchise’s first WNBA Finals appearance in over two decades.

Their definition perhaps had to be rewritten this season through the same basic plot: New York fully retained the top six women (the fateful five plus sixth woman Kayla Thornton) that got them over the semifinal hump and into the Finals … the latter defined by a heartbreaking four-game defeat at the hands of the Las Vegas Aces, one where shorthanded Sin City earned its second straight ring on Brooklyn hardwood.

With a chanceat redemption brewing, the definition was allowed to be written in relative silence: New York mostly kept to itself in the offseason, quietly re-assembling under the cover of a thrilling NCAA Tournament and wheeling and dealing amongst their WNBA sisters.

General manager Jonathan Kolb took care of some of the dirty work early by getting Laney-Hamilton and Thornton back on multi-year deals before the trek to the Finals started. Jones re-upped, as did Stewart, who rejected an expensive core option to keep the Liberty’s assets relatively fresh.

International fan favorites like Marine Johannes and Han Xu stayed overseas to prep for the aforementioned Olympics, leaving replacements like Kennedy Burke and Leonie Fiebich to pick up the slack. The latter duo came up particularly big over the last couple, when each stepped into the starting for an injured Laney-Hamilton and a resting Stewart.

So far, New York’s gambit, one that banked on familiarity and a year of working together, has paid off.

The on-court success perhaps pales in comparison to how the Liberty have helped each other off the floor: this season has carried a somber undertone due to some losses in the locker room, as Vandersloot took nearly a month off after the passing of her mother Jan while Jones returned to her native Bahamas shortly after the Commissioner’s Cup Final loss to Minnesota to attend the funeral of a youth coach.

Unity is obviously expected in such scenarios, but many other groups dealing with such situations don’t have the pressure of a professional basketball title hovering above them. Head coach Sandy Brondello praised the way her team has conducted itself from both a competitive and emotional end.

“I’m proud of the way we respond. When we lose, sometime it’s a reality check. (It’s about) making them as good as wins because they make you want to refocus and commit back to how we want to play,” Brondello said. “We’re capable of scoring inside and outside. That’s our weapon at the moment.”

“To be 21-4 at this stage and have to overcome players having to sit out, not be with the team, it allows other players to step up and see what we have. I think we’re a resilient bunch. I think our chemistry continues to grow. We learn more about each other. We’re still not where we need to be but we’re on the right track.”

New Yorkers are keeping busy with the Olympic cauldron set to be lit:: Brondello, Fiebich, Ionescu, Stewart, and Nyara Sabally are off repping their respective nations at the Olympics while the others bide their time at home. A playoff clinch likely awaits upon their return (one more win should likely do it) but the 15-game slate

Liberty basketball, however, has proven to be the solution. The road ahead provides the perfect chance at a definition adjustment … one that will account for a championship.

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