Jones was chatting it up with Zendaya and reminiscing with Megan Thee Stallion about the rapper’s TikTok with the team backstage at The Tonight Show back in October. Stewart was actively convincing Anne Hathaway to come to Liberty games instead of solely attending Knicks games at The Garden. And Ionescu was starstruck when she saw Omar Sy come out of an elevator. Sy plays the lead in Netflix’s thriller mystery series Lupin, a show Ionescu enjoys.
And just around a day later, Rihanna, also at the Gala, publicly commented about a partnership that she and her makeup brand Fenty Beauty will have with the Liberty this season. “I’m excited to see how these incredible women of the New York Liberty put their game faces on and am proud to have Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin be a part of their story this season,” she told Allure.
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The attention and clout that the Liberty amassed just a little over a week before the 2025 WNBA regular season is a result of what they accomplished last October. After 28 years as a franchise, the Liberty became WNBA champions for the first time. But the high that the franchise rides from now until ring and banner-raising night on May 17 will ultimately put a close to the nostalgia surrounding 2024.
“Aside from ring night, there is nothing else reflecting back to last season,” Stewart said the day following the Gala. “We want to make this season new and special on its own.”
New York doesn’t want to be known only for last year. They don’t want their relevance on and off the court to fade. And the way the Liberty make sure that doesn’t happen is by winning, something Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb stressed during his preseason press conference on May 3.
“We want this franchise to be a legacy franchise,” he said. “We want this franchise to be iconic. It only happens through winning, and that only happens through your daily habits. And so right now, we are on a mission, and we’re all aligned to focus on those daily habits so that we’re in a position to potentially do that again. And so last year was great. It’s awesome, but we’re focused on this year.”
The Liberty’s ultimate goal in 2025 is to win back-to-back championships, something that has only been done four times in league history. How will New York do it, especially with the majority of the league improving this past winter during the offseason?
Head coach Sandy Brondello uttered that New York’s motto for this season is evolution. The Minnesota Lynx were very close to winning their fifth WNBA championship last October in a Game 5 that Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve believed was “stolen” from her team due poor officiating.
How do the Liberty make sure that their offense isn’t predictable and their defense can handle the most potent personnel, including a Lynx roster on a revenge tour? They added new assistant coach Sonia Raman, tasked with updating the offense to use space on the floor and exploit mismatches even more efficiently than it did before. Expect more ball-handling and facilitating from Stewart and less automatic post-ups from Jones.
Defensively, assistant Olaf Lange has tools in his toolbox with Natasha Cloud and a refreshed Rebekah Gardner, who spent the entire 2024 season rehabbing from a ruptured achilles.
How do the Liberty ensure that their depth is quality and not theoretical? They hired Andrew Wade, a player development specialist and breakout coach from Unrivaled who will make sure that players on the bench are ready and feel empowered when their numbers are called.
Integrating Natasha Cloud on and off the court
The Liberty’s headlining acquisition during the offseason was trading for point guard Natasha Cloud after she had previously been traded from the Phoenix Mercury to the Connecticut Sun in a four-team deal that sent both Satou Sabally and Alyssa Thomas to Phoenix.
After Courtney Vandersloot decided to return to Chicago during free agency, New York had a ball handling need, and once Betnijah Laney-Hamilton tore her meniscus, their needs became even greater — especially on the defensive end.
When the trade was first announced after a month of speculation, the on-court fit made sense, but how would Cloud’s booming personality integrate into a team defined by collective sacrifice?
Cloud addressed that on day one of training camp, telling reporters specifically what she’ll bring to the 2025 Liberty. “I know that I bring an energy and a tenacity that they already had here, but I intensify it,” she said. “So I’m gonna get into people on the defensive end. I’m gonna push pace. I’m gonna make sure I get our franchise players shots.”
That’s a reference to Ionescu, Jones and Stewart, who the Liberty have positioned clearly as the three faces of the franchise. While the intent from Cloud proves complete buy-in, her integration and on-court chemistry will take time. Even with Vandersloot who played both with Stewart and Jones in Russia before playing together on the Liberty, it took some time to figure out how to play with both versatile bigs in Brondello’s system.
Assistant coach Lange explained that while Cloud’s energy was welcomed, he thought she was “forcing the issue” during week one of training camp and wanting to do everything perfectly all at once. In week two, however, Lange has seen Cloud narrow her focus instead of putting unrealistic expectations on herself.
In the huddle, Cloud has become an immediate voice, leading the team’s final chants before ending a practice. That was once a job done consistently by Laney-Hamilton — New York would say the word “heart” — their culture word — in unison after Laney-Hamilton began the chant.
“If you come as a leader into a new team, you can’t just start and [take] over leadership, because there’s leaders established,” Lange told The Next. “So she’s doing a really good job of picking a moment while still keeping leadership structures intact and now finding her own voice within that space.”
Cloud appears to be aware that she most likely won’t be getting the 10-12 shots she had in the last three years of her career, but that doesn’t mean her role won’t be vital to New York’s success in 2025. Her defensive intensity, rim pressure, passing ability and voice will all be embraced while franchise stalwart Laney-Hamilton recovers without pressure to return this season. More on that shortly.
Who else fills in for who the Liberty lost?
When the Liberty first announced that, following an injury while competing in Unrivaled, Laney-Hamilton had surgery and was going to miss 5-6 months before returning to basketball activities, there was uncertainty around if she would potentially be available in the final weeks of the regular season and into the postseason.
On Saturday Kolb clarified that New York is most likely going to suspend her contract. To be clear, a suspended contract doesn’t mean that Laney-Hamilton did anything wrong, but it allows for her to take her time recovering — an opportunity she didn’t have in 2022 when she came back in August from an arthroscopic partial meniscectomy surgery.
When Jonquel Jones was asked about the void Laney-Hamilton leaves in the 2025 roster, she noted that Laney-Hamilton was often New York’s best one-on-one player in addition to her staunch defense. “We could just give her the ball in really tough situations and know that she’s going to get a bucket or put us in a really good situation,” Jones said.
When it comes to one-on-one play, fan favorite and walking highlight reel Marine Johannès is poised to step up in Laney-Hamilton’s absence. Johannès, who has been in training camp since the third day, is motivated to prove to herself and others that she’s not just a shooter. She’s willing to drive, create and do whatever it takes to help her team, including more effort defensively. Johannès’ creative style of play allows the Liberty to be a different team than they were in 2024.
While Cloud will take a lot of Laney-Hamilton’s defensive load, she won’t have to defend perimeter threats alone — far from it. Rebekah Gardner, who has so far impressed in camp, has emerged as a two-way plug-and-play player.
And then there’s Leonie Fiebich, who will be relied upon even more than she was in 2024. Her ability to play the two, three and four positions just like Laney-Hamilton will be crucial in New York’s title defense. Brondello wants to evolve her role into less of just a 3-and-D, and more of a wing that also drives and can create off the dribble.
Speaking of Fiebich, currently she’s still in Spain competing in the Spanish league final. Her team Valencia won the first game out of a best-of-three series. If Valencia wins on Sunday, Fiebich can be back in Brooklyn prior to New York’s home opener; if they don’t, Fiebich will miss the championship ring ceremony and should arrive in Brooklyn before the Liberty’s second game of the season in Chicago on May 22.
“We do not want to stay the same,” Kolb said. “I think we’ve got excellent downhill pressure this year that’s going to really open things up for us. I think the potential of a [Johannès] with a [Fiebich] spaced is going to put teams in decision making mode, and we want to get teams to get into rotation.”
Another roster shift came via the expansion draft. The Golden State Valkyries selected Kayla Thornton, the Liberty’s ultimate glue player and someone who upheld the Liberty’s team culture. Thornton was vocal, silly and made sure everyone on roster felt comfortable. She also played a vital three-four swingwoman role that often allowed the Liberty to rest Stewart or Jones when necessary.
While Thornton’s partner in crime Kennedy Burke will miss her dearly, Burke understands that Thornton’s departure gave her a massive opportunity on this 2025 New York roster. Expect Burke to take a more vocal role leading the team’s bench unit in addition to playing a very similar role to what Thornton played for the Liberty in both 2023 and 2024.
“I’ll be playing probably a three, but I think my main thing is going to be a four,” Burke said. “But there’s going to be situations where I’m going to have to bring the ball up the floor. It happens when I get a rebound, I’m going to have to go. I’ve been a kind of versatile player all my life, so I’m kind of used to it, so I’m excited to step into that role for a better team.”
How are the final roster spots determined?
While there isn’t an Olympic break this season, the Liberty still have some international competitions to manage during the season. Fiebich, Nyara Sabally and Johannès will be gone for weeks during the month of June to compete with their national teams in FIBA’s EuroBasket which takes place in Germany, Greece, Italy and the Czech Republic.
What that means is New York is going to need players that can come in on hardship contracts while that trio is overseas in Europe with their contracts temporarily suspended. And that was a huge part of what 2025’s training camp has been about.
While there were some questions about Marquesha Davis making the final 2025 roster, the sophomore has returned to camp clearly more confident and with more wrinkles in her game. And the Liberty’s other major newbie during this offseason is Isabelle “Izzy” Harrison, who most likely will take Sabally’s minutes once she heads off to EuroBasket.
As for who takes that singular spot on the opening day roster, and potentially who comes back in June? From now until the end of training camp and the preseason, Jaylyn Sherrod, Esmery Martinez and Leaonna “Neah” Odom, whose journey back to pro basketball has been nothing short of remarkable, will all be jockeying for the final spot and, if not that, an opportunity to come back on a hardship contract in June.
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Brondello acknowledged the tough cuts to come and, while she didn’t provide any direct hints, she laid out what she and the coaches are going to consider by the time roster cut-down day comes around on May 15. She’s looking for that final player on the opening day roster to be able to separate themselves and provide something different from what the team has currently on the roster.
“We have to understand, obviously, in EuroBasket, we’ll miss a few players, so we need players to step up into those roles as well, too,” Brondello said. “So I think they’ve all shown really good moments. … What do we need for those to fill out the roster? [The] 11th and 12th player[s] typically don’t play a lot, but they have to be ready to play.”
If the Liberty find a way to repeat as WNBA champions and potentially earn dynasty status, their cultural relevance won’t be just a flash in the pan. Invitations to the Met Gala will keep on coming, big time partnerships like with Fenty Beauty and Liberty Mutual will continue to roll in. And the team will continue to grow its sphere of influence.
“Why can’t we be considered one of the greatest dynasties in all sports?,” Ionescu said on Tuesday. “And for us, that’s kind of the driving and motivator and really hard to do. And I think that’s what the goal is going to be. And if that doesn’t kind of fuel you to get up every single day and come up and show up and do your best, then you’re probably in the wrong business.”
The Liberty’s business clearly still isn’t finished.
Want more team-by-team previews for the 2025 WNBA season? Read them all here!
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