Olympics, Schulympics — the New York Liberty are after more than a gold medal: their first WNBA championship
Looking for reasons to believe this year ends differently than last? Have a handful.
In this election year the New York Liberty’s season, like American democracy, is mostly finished, with the bits left to wrap up likely to draw a lotta eyeballs. The WNBA is on pause while the Olympics oppress Paris for one last week, featuring Liberty both present and past. When play resumes, the Seafoam will sport the league’s best record, though the race to the finish will be more of a sprint than usual, even by this year’s already-cramped standards: the Liberty played 25 games over two months before the Olympics; starting August 15th in Los Angeles, they’ll play their final 15 in just over a month.
The Liberty were analytics darlings last season, won the Commissioner’s Cup (which would sound so much cooler if it were the Commissar’s Cup) and beat Las Vegas more than once – not in the Finals, though, it’d turn out. They’re slaying the stats again this season, they reached the CC Final and won their only meeting so far against the Aces. Are there any reasons to think this year could end with the franchise’s first championship? There are. Five.
Jonquel Jones, MVP-version
It’s not just that Jones is far healthier this year than last, though the difference can’t be understated; she’s on-pace to shatter her career-high in minutes, ironically set last year, when she spent half the year recovering from a stress reaction in her left foot suffered before she signed with New York. In many ways Jones is having a career year, which is saying a lot given that career includes an MVP season. Last year Jones didn’t look like herself until after the All-Star break. Her playing like an MVP from the jump (despite only being third in MVP odds on her own team!) is a big reason why the Liberty are frontrunners for homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs.
On the defensive end Jones’ improved mobility has paid off tangibly and intangibly. Jones remains an elite paint protector, ranking eighth in the league in total blocks.
But her ability to react and recover at the rate she has this season is a game-changer, like going from a rook to a queen. The Liberty’s improved perimeter defense is explored in greater depth later in the piece, but one reason for its growth is the aggressiveness the guards and wings can defend with knowing a fully-operational Jones lurks nearby like some Death Star. And her destruction doesn’t come at the cost of chaos – Jones is committing the fewest fouls of her career, down nearly 20% from last year’s rate. She is to opposing offenses as Pac-Man is to those little dots. Barbecued little dots.
On the offensive end she’s just as incredible. Jones is setting career-bests in points per scoring attempt, assist rate and assist-to-turnover rate; her points per play, effective field goal percentage, 3-point rate and percentage of points scored from threes are all her best since 2018. She’s already generated as many offensive win shares this season as she did all of 2023. I have no idea how a win share is generated – I imagine they’re like A.I., where it costs like 80 ounces of water to make a picture of Netanyahu wearing a keffiyeh. Still, three-eighths of the season remain, so that’s gotta be good.
In a feat of strength that would cause even the quads of Atlas to tremble anxiously, Jones is pretty much single-handedly responsible for the Liberty repeating as the W’s leader in longballs taken and maken. New York’s biggest deep threats, Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart, are both shooting significantly worse from last year (45% and 36%) to this (36% and 23%). Courtney Vandersloot and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton haven’t suffered such steep drops, but they’re both down a little, too. Jones has raised her 3-point rate from 27% to 38% while upping her accuracy from 35% to 40%. Basically everything she’s doing is working.
Even her new shoes are super cute.
Their depth is deeper
You may have heard that in the 2023 offseason the Liberty assembled a superteam. Mission accomplished: their starting five includes five All-Stars, multiple MVPs and four if not five future Hall of Famers. Tough to top that. But teams shall not live by starters alone.
In that 2023 season, the Seafoam only had five starts all year from anyone outside the five regulars, all Marine Johannès. And though she is the greatest MJ in the history of all MJs, the team went just 3-2 in her starts (.600 winning percentage), versus 29-6 when the regular starters were healthy (.829). Already in 2024, through just 25 games, the Liberty have had 18 spot starters across 13 games. They’re record when shorthanded? 12-1 (.923), even better than when they’re fully healthy (9-3, .750).
I mentioned the mostly across-the-board drop in the starters’ 3-point shooting from last year to this. Not only has Jones helped offset that, but this year the two reserves who’ve played the most have improved the team’s deep threat off the bench. Kayla Thornton and Leonie Fiebich are combining to make nearly a quarter of the Liberty’s longballs on a combined 39% from deep. The reserves are also bigger: Johannès, Jocelyn Willoughby and Epiphanny Prince were all 6-foot or shorter; Thornton, Fiebich and Kennedy Burke all between 6-foot-1 and 6-foot-4. Fiebich, in particular, has been a revelation, with HerHoopStats’ Alford Corriette calling her rooke-scale deal “the best value contract in the league.”
It’s been a rough Olympics for Fiebich physically, having rolled her ankle in a win over Japan and then her and fellow Liberty Nyara Sabally colliding yesterday against Stewart and Ionescu’s Team USA. But reportedly she “avoided serious injury,” leaving New York fans free to dream there’s more to come from the legend out of Landsberg: the team is 7-0 in her starts, where she’s shooting 46% on threes and averaging nearly three assists per turnover. Meanwhile, her time in Paris has only see her impress even more.
A year ago, Johannès and Thornton were the only reserves to play more than 300 minutes, with the former maybe minimized in her impact, given her greatest skill is her offense and she was playing behind two offense-first Hall of Famers both averaging more than 30 minutes a game. This year Thornton and Fiebich have already passed 300, Burke will and even Ivana Dojkić might. Sabally had played every game early before a back injury; hopefully she returns from the Olympics healthy and ready to roll again. Depth has helped New York not only survive but thrive during the regular-season to date. It could pay off come the postseason, too.
In last year’s postseason, the Liberty’s five starters all averaged between 33 and 38 minutes a game; no reserve averaged more than 10. The team they fell to, the Aces, had four starters average heavy minutes but split the bulk of the rest between Kiah Stokes and Alysha Clark (26 and 24 per game). And when Chelsea Gray was unavailable for Game 4 of the Finals, Clark stepped up to play 37 minutes while Cayla George and Sydney Colson added 30 and 15. When the stakes were their highest, the champs weren’t afraid to dig deep. Sandy Brondello, either because of comfort or necessity, appears to feel the same about her bench this season. Depth kills — slowly, quietly. But it kills.
Sabrina’s well-roundedness
The W likes ‘em big.
Last year’s All-WNBA First Team was made up entirely of forwards and centers: Stewart, A’ja Wilson, Alyssa Thomas, Satou Sabally and Napheesa Collier. It’s not fair to chalk that up to a size fetish; every one of those players is multi-talented, entirely deserving of their prestige. It won’t be easy for a guard to crack that. But who would be the one to do it?
Jewell Loyd was top-10 in MVP voting last year, and this year her Seattle Storm have jumped from second-to-last all the way up to fourth, with her an All-Star both years. Her scoring is down, which is not only expected but probably healthy given the additions of Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins-Smith were made in part to lessen Loyd’s load. But her 3-ball has deserted her, falling from 36% a year ago to its current 26%. So it’s hard to credit her primarily for her team’s upswing.
Jackie Young has seen her points and particularly her assists rise this year with Gray missing the Aces’ first dozen games. Still, her overall shooting (52% to 45%) and 3-point accuracy (45% to 34%), coupled with Vegas stumbling to its worse 12-game stretch (6-6) in two years in Gray’s absence, doesn’t exactly scream “Honor this effort!” Nothing to be ashamed of, though neither does it demand history stop and revere.
It’s possible a certain polarizing rookie turning things around in Indiana could receive enough support to be All-First Team her rookie year. If the league feels there’s no such thing as bad publicity, the literal weeks of controversy selecting Caitlin Clark for that honor would create would certainly keep the W on a lot of bad-faith actors’ front burners. Clark leads the league in assists and is second in minutes, sixth in free throws, seventh in scoring, eighth in usage and ninth in steals, all without a break in over a year and with much of the world micro-analyzing every move she makes on and off the court. If Clark breaks into the First Team, you can’t really complain.
But another possibility for that spot is Ionescu, who has done what the greatest players and winners so often do: change her game knowing she’s great enough to do so, knowing that’s what it will take to lift the rest of her teammates to the top. A first glance at Ionescu’s numbers from last year to this show a similar drop to Loyd and Young’s 3-point shooting. Look closer, let your eyes unfocus from the numbers and the relevant noise pops out like a stereogram image.
Ionescu has shown improvement in her shooting from literally every area of the floor except behind the arc. You can see her average shot attempt distance is closer than last year. The first six columns after distance measure how many shots she’s taken from different distances; the last six measure her accuracy from those spots. Her 3-point makes and takes are down, but she’s significantly up from the mid- and long-midrange.
The Liberty struggled at times in the playoffs offensively because Stewart struggled to an inexplicable extent from deep (an issue that’s carried over into this season) and the offense was top-heavy inside the arc: if Stewie or Jonquel weren’t scoring in the paint or midrange, nobody was. Consider: Gray, Young and Kelsey Plum, the Aces’ top-three guards, combined to make 10.5 2-pointers per playoff game. Ionescu, Vanderlsoot and Johannés made only 4.5; even if you count Laney-Hamilton as the third guard over Johannés, they still only combined for 8.5 twos. In the playoffs, Plum and Young both made about as many twos as threes, with Gray making way more of the former than the latter. Ionescu took and made nearly twice as many threes as twos during the playoffs. The offense had to diversify.
Vandersloot, 34 when the Finals finished, was unlikely to radically change her game. Neither Laney-Hamilton nor Johannés were big enough parts of the offense to compel across-the-board changes, even if they altered their approaches. The most likely candidate to expand her game in a way that benefitted everybody was Ionescu. Thankfully, she did. And not just her shot profile.
This season Ionescu has played more of a true combo-guard role: her assist-to-turnover ratio is a career-best 2.22-to-1 while she’s leading the team in both scoring and assists, something only accomplished before her in Liberty history by herself two years ago, Tina Charles in 2016 and several times by both Cappie Pondexter and Becky Hammon. Ionescu’s growing threat is essential for this team if it hopes to go further than last year’s franchise-best Finalists. Vandersloot is not a poor shooter, but she’s mindful enough of her shortcomings that at times it affects her willingness to shoot, and elite defenses treat her as a “best-case” scenario that doesn’t really exist when defending a line-up featuring, say, Wilson, Plum, Gray and Young. Remember how last season ended for New York.
Watch Ionescu in the clip. Usually the inbounder is the most dangerous option in these kinds of scenarios, but note how Colson literally shadows her the whole time; there’s zero opportunity for her to get any kind of look. Contrast that to Plum’s defense on Vandersloot: the second anyone else is open, in this case Laney-Hamilton, Plum races over to rotate to her, leaving Vandersloot alone in the corner. Replace Vandersloot in that scenario with, say, Fiebich, and now the Aces can’t be quite so double-happy. Station Ionescu in that corner and Stewart may never be doubled in the first place, since Young doubling means either Laney-Hamilton or Ionescu will get an open jumper.
Also, did you know Ionescu has drawn four charges already this season? Know how many she had before then? In her entire pro career? None! An astonishing, Malthusian rate of growth as a defender, really. And lest we forget in light of all her new skills as an orchestrator and disruptor that she’s still about as good as it gets drilling the deep threes.
Like Jonquel, Ionescu has leveled-up from last year’s All-Star to something much more this season. Is she the best guard in the W? She’s closer than she was in 2023, which is as much reason as any for hope in 2024.
The defense is defense-ier
Last year the Liberty lost to the Aces in part because Vegas is loaded with perimeter talent and New York didn’t have the talent on the defensive perimeter to match them. Take a look at their numbers from 2023 to 2024 and one of the biggest differences is their steal rate. It’s way up this year. Waaaay up. Why?
Jones and Ionescu’s rates are slightly down. Vandersloot’s has fallen nearly 20%. Fiebich has the exact same rate Johannès did, while Thornton’s has barely budged. The upswing comes from Stewart and Laney-Hamilton’s rates exploding – Stewie’s up 36%, BLH 57% – while Burke’s 3.2% rate dwarfs Stefanie Dolson’s 0.2% a year ago. Even Sabally, in her limited minutes, has gone from 0.8% to 3.8%.
Some of this, as mentioned earlier, is the benefit of having a healthy All-World defender in Jones active behind the perimeter defense. Some, also mentioned earlier, is the team being a bit bigger than they were last year. When you know you can afford to take chances and you know you have the strength and length to make them pay, you probably take more chances. And the more you take, usually, the more you pull off. Continuity pays over time, and if there’s one significant difference between this year’s team and last year’s it’s the continuity enjoyed by the current squad.
Just as Ionescu’s emergence as a top-notch dual threat gives the offense an edge it didn’t have a year ago, a deeper defensive group let’s the Liberty present more looks on that end as well. The goal always is to be the team deep in the playoffs that’s seen everything and has answers for everything. Last year the Liberty learned where they’re lacking. So far this year, they appear to have solved those areas.
Who’s beating them?
It’s not every day the biggest threat to the team with the league’s best record is in fifth place. Then again, tying it back to the election year it’s not every day a convicted rapist and lifelong criminal runs on the platform of the traditional law-and-order party against the typically out-of-touch incumbents running a prosecutor who despite pushing 60 is easily the cooler, younger choice. It’s a strange time to be alive, and American.
Las Vegas stumbled to a 6-6 opening sans Point Gawd Gray but have been their usual selves since at 10-2, currently virtually tied with Seattle and Minnesota for the third seed, and a potential second-round matchup with Connecticut. Let’s talk Sun for a sec.
Did you know that going back to the start of the 2023 season and counting the playoffs, the Sun are 46-10*? Isn’t that remarkable? You know what’s more remarkable? That asterisk is there because that 46-10 is against everyone except the Liberty and the Aces. In that same span Connecticut is just 1-3 against Vegas and 1-10 against New York! That’s 2-13, for a 13% winning percentage. The Sun would have to reverse nearly two seasons’ worth of evidence suggesting an Uncasville 9 is a New York or a Vegas 3 to make a believer out of anybody. A model franchise they may be, but title contenders they ain’t.
So is there anyone besides the Aces who can threaten the Liberty’s title hopes? By my count, excluding the six losses that game when Gray missed the start of this season, here are all the teams — counting Commissioner’s Cups and the playoffs — to defeat Las Vegas since the start of 2023, and how many times:
Chicago; Washington; Dallas; Connecticut (1)
Los Angeles (2)
New York (4)
The Liberty have nearly as many credible wins over the Aces as literally the rest of the league put together. Assuming the back-to-back champs are reasonably healthy for their title defense, it’s hard to imagine anyone besides the Liberty knocking them out of the playoffs. Maybe the Storm or Mercury pull out a win; maybe even the Sky, who’ve punched above their weight much of the season. But it’s difficult to imagine anyone besides the Liberty going toe-to-toe with them. Then again, the Aces are trying to become the first W team since the Houston Comets in 1999 to threepeat; those Comets won it all the league’s first four seasons. Vegas is the only team playing while wearing weights made of time.
It appears all the changes the Liberty made after losing last fall to Las Vegas will ultimately come to play against that same rival this autumn. If Jonquel Jones and Sabrina Ionescu sustain the levels of play they’ve ascended to, the team’s depth and defense remain strengthened and Stewart, Vandersloot and Laney-Hamilton mostly resemble themselves, the Liberty could very well give the city it’s first pro basketball tickertape parade since 1973. And maybe we’ll learn from history that year, and not elect such an obvious crook to the White House this time around.
