This New York Liberty season began with a 9-0 start and expectations of another championship run. Last Friday night, it ended abruptly in the first round of the WNBA playoffs when the Phoenix Mercury won 79-73 in the deciding game of the best-of-three series.
New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart — who sprained her MCL in the Liberty’s overtime win in Game 1 of the series and had only six points in a Game 2 loss — scored a remarkable 30 points on Friday night in Phoenix, including 14 in the fourth quarter. Unfortunately for New York, not one other Liberty player recorded a point in the final 10 minutes. Jonquel Jones, 2024 Finals MVP, was held to three points and seven rebounds all game.
“It really, really hurts, and I think it’ll continue to hurt for days, weeks, months from now,” Stewart said after her earliest playoff exit since 2017 when she played for the Seattle Storm.
The series was, in many ways, a microcosm of the Liberty’s season — a promising start halted by significant adversity and ultimately, not enough players stepping up when it mattered the most. Stewart, for her part, tried to focus on the positive after the loss.
“People could have thought the game was done when it was 72-64 and we still clawed back, fought back and just were a few plays off. And it’s tough. I mean, it hurts, but I wouldn’t want to have any season like this with anybody else. So I’m happy to be here in New York, and happy to be alongside these two fighting every day,” she said, referring guard Sabrina Ionescu and head coach Sandy Brondello, who sat with her on the podium.
“This team is more than resilient with all the shit that we’ve gone through this season, and we left it all out there.”
But while the two-time WNBA MVP was proud of her team’s effort, the Liberty as an organization have a lot of questions to answer. The offseason will not include plans for more parades and banners in Brooklyn. Instead, the team will have to take a hard look at why their best seemed ever so slightly out of reach.
Injuries derailed a strong start
The Liberty looked invincible heading into 2025, especially after a 9-0 start to the season. But things began to unravel when Jones aggravated an ankle injury on June 19 and missed nine consecutive games. She returned on July 22, but four days later, Stewart suffered a bone bruise in her right knee and missed 13 games.
Additionally, center Nyara Sabally missed 21 games, Kennedy Burke missed eight games with a calf strain and Sabrina Ionescu, Natasha Cloud and Isabelle Harrison all missed time down the stretch, too. According to The Next’s injury tracker, Liberty players missed a combined 122 games in the regular season due to injury, the second-most in the league, and the team deployed a staggering 18 starting lineups in a 44-game season. Only one player, reserve guard Marine Johannés played in every regular-season game.
“Obviously we didn’t live up to our expectations that we set out for ourselves, being the defending champions, and it was hard to get any kind of rhythm for us … we faced so much adversity,” Brondello said Friday.
“I’ve had injuries with players before, but not like quite like this year. But, you know, proud of this players. We just hung in there. And there were games obviously, when we knew we could be better and we weren’t. So that’s on us finding the little bit more consistency, regardless of who’s on the court.”
The injuries don’t explain all of the Liberty’s troubles, though
Coming into the season, New York was a favorite to run it back due to their roster depth. But by the time the playoffs came around, the Liberty’s depth was practically non-existent.
Among the stars expected to shine was Johannés, the longest-tenured Liberty player who missed the 2024 season due to French national team commitments. Johannés, also known as “La Magicienne”, is known for her dazzling, one-legged perimeter shot. But while the Liberty had the second-highest 3-point percentage in the league in the regular season (35.5%), Johannés had the lowest field-goal percentage (39.7%) and 3-point percentage (34.4%) of her WNBA career.
She averaged 18 minutes per game, with her numbers peaking to nearly 20 minutes in August, but by September, Johannés was averaging two points in 10.5 minutes per game. In the playoffs she was basically out of the rotation, playing only 10 minutes in garbage time of Game 2, and going 0-3 from the arc in that span.
The Liberty also signed two free agents midseason to help bolster their injury-ravaged frontcourt. But those moves fell well short of the potential they carried on paper.
Forward Stephanie Talbot, who started the season with the Golden State Valkyries, was picked up on July 21. The Australian Olympian was meant to add more depth at the wing, but due to Stewart’s injury she spent her first month in New York playing out of position. She only provided 2.5 points per game from the bench, and like Johannés, only played in garbage time of Game 2 in the playoffs.
The biggest midseason signing was Emma Meesseman, the 2019 WNBA Finals MVP, who joined the Liberty after an MVP-worthy performance for Belgium at EuroBasket this summer. She averaged over 19 points and nine rebounds per game in the June tournament, and her addition to the team had many pencilling the Liberty back into the Finals.
But while Meesseman had a decent regular-season for the Liberty, averaging 13.4 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.2 assists in 26 minutes over 17 games, in the postseason she looked completely outmatched by the physicality of the Phoenix Mercury. She only averaged 4.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, and two assists in 13.3 minutes in the playoffs, and in the deciding Game 3 she had zero points in nine minutes.
Overall, Brondello showed little faith in her bench. In a season where the Liberty were without Stewart and Jones for significant stretches, reserve players averaged the fifth-fewest minutes per game (12) in the league in the regular season.
Although some challenges the Liberty encountered this season may be fixed with rest and recovery in the offseason, changes to the roster may still be in order.
Stewart says she will return, but who will join her?
With the status of the CBA unknown, and two expansion teams joining the league next season, it is unlikely New York can keep its roster together. The Liberty have eight players entering the offseason as unrestricted free agents, including four of their five starters — Cloud, Jones, Ionescu and Stewart.
Stewart, for her part, was emphatic after the loss to the Mercury that she plans to try and run in back with New York.
“Well, I’m coming back,” she said moments after the Game 3 loss. She also ardently showed her support for Brondello.
“What the fuck,” Stewart said just loud enough for the microphone to detect when asked what she would say to people questioning if Brondello should return.
“I mean, to anybody that that kind of questions Sandy being here like, this is a resilient group, and she has our back, and we have hers.”
Ionescu implied that she would return, too.
“I’m excited for next year. I think we’re going to use this to continue to motivate us,” Ionescu added. “I think you gotta cherish those years where everything seems to be going well, like you’re healthy, you got the players out there, and this year just wasn’t our year with that… it just didn’t fall our way with injuries.”
Still, plenty of questions remain.
Will the Liberty opt to stick with Cloud at point guard? Will Meesseman want to return, and if she does, will the Liberty want her? How can the team sure up its depth? The Liberty need to spend the offseason taking a hard look in the mirror. Something needs to change if New York wants to maximize its championship window.
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