The tip of the sword: Breanna Stewart & a new New York Liberty
The native New Yorker has New York hardwood hearts hoping to hit the heights this year
A revolutionary free agency announcement by one of the best players in the game often foreshadows a really great season for that respective sport: LeBron James took his talents to South Beach, Bryce Harper cashed major checks in his money-making move to Philadelphia and now Breanna Stewart stands among the greats – again. One of the WNBA’s biggest stars is now one of the Big Apple’s biggest.
On the first of February, the two-time Finals MVP kept it short and sweet with a tweet: a simple Statue of Liberty emoji adorned a picture of the Empire State Building spelling out her name and a self-made TikTok jersey-swap video, with Alicia Keys’ iconic ballad playing in the background, with “Stewie” swapping a Storm yellow #30 for seafoam. The New York Liberty have the league’s most anticipated roster this season, and bringing in Stewart was the icing on an already star-studded cake. About a month before Stewart’s move, the Liberty added All-Star and former MVP Jonquel Jones in a three-team deal with the Connecticut Sun and Dallas Wings.
“Playing against the Liberty last year, I saw a shift in the culture,” Jones said earlier this year. “The way that they played, you know, high-octane basketball, playing both sides of the ball, a lot of young talent that was very lively, and you could see that they were invested in winning.”
The high-octane basketball she was talking about? The offense, led by All-Star Betnijah Laney and sensational point-guard prowess from Oregon legend Sabrina Ionescu; on top of that, add the confidence of 24-year-old 6-foot-2 guard Didi Richards and a step-up in coaching with Sandy Brondello to a team that made the playoffs by the skin of their teeth before being ousted by Candace Parker and the Chicago Sky in the first round. The Liberty finished last season 16-20, improving from 12-20 the year before and skyrocketing from 2020’s abysmal 2-20 Wubble. After Stewie published her iconic tweet, four-time All-Star, five-time All-WNBA and 2021 champion Courtney Vandersloot also tweeted that she would be making the move to Brooklyn from Chicago. Their road to the championship has already started, as they have been running team practices and team bonding at Brooklyn Nets games.
The Liberty, owned by Nets co-owners Clara and Joe Tsai, have been under major reconstruction since becoming one of the league’s eight original franchises in 1997. The Tsais took over team ownership on January 23, 2019, months ahead of the regular season. In October of that year they announced the team would play at the Barclays Center instead of the Westchester County Center. In their 26-year history, the Liberty have made the Finals four times: the inaugural 1997 season, 1999, 2000 and 2002. Now, with the addition of Stewart, the Liberty have a real shot to return there and win the franchise’s first WNBA title. She and Ionescu were both #1 picks, in 2016 and 2020, respectively. Stewart spent seven years with the Seattle Storm, the team that drafted her, before deciding to take her talents to the opposite coast.
“I want to continue to be great, I want to go to the place where I can continue to help this league become better,” Stewie noted. “We need to raise the standard, and why not go to the biggest market in all of sports?”
New York is the mecca of many things, and can perhaps become the mecca of women’s basketball. As collegiate women’s hoops has sprawled out of Storrs with the University of Connecticut Huskies, and down south into South Carolina and Louisiana, so too can professional women’s hoops. A personal anecdote that showed me just how much the Tsais have to give to their teams: in a press conference introducing Brondello last year, I asked a question of Clara Tsai. Looking closer, I realized she was answering it from thousands of feet in the air on a private plane. The Tsais are worth $5.9 billion, and although the Storm were recently named the WNBA’s most valuable team at $151 million dollars, the Liberty have what others don’t: a hub of people longing for entertainment. The Tsais are able to publish advertising at Nets games; Barclays Center encourages concertgoers and passersby to stop in for a Liberty game throughout the summer.
The Liberty preseason kicks off with an away trip on May 10th against the Sun. Their regular season starts Friday, May 19th against the Washington Mystics, with the home opener Sunday the 21st against Aaliyah Boston and the Indiana Fever. “I’m really excited to go after the first championship,” Breanna Stewart noted. If she gets it, she’ll have topped LeBron and Harper’s first years in a new home while giving the Liberty and the league a really great season.
