Sunday afternoon was Legends Weekend at the Barclays Center for the New York Liberty. Rebecca Lobo was announcing the game for ESPN, while Becky Hammon, coaching the Las Vegas Aces, was also in the building. It was a full house…
Sadly, her Aces did not reciprocate the vibe. Legends A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray, and
Jackie Young did not play, with Vegas having played in Minnesota on Saturday afternoon.
“Everybody has a brutal schedule at some point,” said Hammon. “I don’t even think they do this in the NBA though, where it’s [two games in] less than 24 hours. You can check, and I’m pretty sure that’s not even legal on the NBA side … Not going to put them in any kind of jeopardy to get hurt when we’ve been expending a lot of energy and traveling a lot of miles back and forth, crisscrossing the country. So it is what it is. I know these are big matchups, and these are what people want to see. But you should ensure that it’s fair.”
Hammon is correct, and it’s tough to blame her for sitting the three stars who once again carry the weight of championship hopes. Sadly, it did eliminate the opportunity for a really competitive basketball game on Sunday afternoon, though Liberty fans were pleased just the same.
New York took care of business, cruising to their seventh win in eight tries. They shot 5-of-17 from three in the first half while Vegas shot 5-of-9, but at no point were the Liberty about to get caught sleeping. They dominated the glass and lived in the paint, with Jonquel Jones making it extra clear that Vegas’ B-team isn’t at this level…
Jones had a big second quarter en route to 15/8/2, playing just 19 minutes. Sabrina Ionescu shot just 2-of-10 but it hardly mattered, given that the Libs caught fire in the second half and an all-bench unit put the game away. Raquel Carrera and Han Xu got to play 17 minutes apiece, Rebekah Gardner took 11 shots, Marine Fauthoux nearly led the team in minutes in her first game on a standard contract, and Marine Johannès spent the second half playing H-O-R-S-E.
Johannès bashfully smiled through a career-high 27 points as her teammates went crazy, and everybody had a good time. New York won 111-71, that 40-point margin being the third-largest victory in franchise history.
“Yeah, we haven’t had one of these in a while,” said Ionescu postgame.
There’s really not much else to say. New York’s next game is on Tuesday night, a road game against the Indiana Fever. While the team has been racking up wins against mediocre opponents and rising up the standings, that will be a real test. They’ll still be without their two best wings in Satou Sabally and Leonie Fiebich, but Head Coach Chris DeMarco spoke about both on Sunday.
When asked if he expected Sabally back at any point this season, he gave a one-word answer: “Yes.”
DeMarco also reported that Fiebich is moving better and is progressing, though she remains without a timeline. Of course, the biggest Chris DeMarco story on Sunday was the audible boos — not widespread but from a few loud fans — he received during intros. He was then asked about it during postgame, as Breanna Stewart chuckled and simply said, “Welcome to New York.”
He gave the right answer: “They love their team. They want us to be successful, and we have had a lot of success, and we love our fans. It’s crazy in there, you hear when we make a run.”
I have often found myself in the minority when discussing the New York Liberty this season. Have they been great? No. Now, how much should losing Satou Sabally and Leonie Fiebich affect them, not to mention starting without Sabrina Ionescu? Was that 2-8 stretch evidence of top-heavy roster building?
I don’t see answers. Maybe that’s a cop out, but I think you can make pretty convincing arguments on all sides. It is brutal to lose your top three wings, no matter who you are. I can’t speak to Betnijah Laney-Hamilton’s relationship with the coaching staff and front office, though DeMarco let it slip on Saturday that “even at the start of the season, she had expressed if there’s other opportunities that she wanted to look at those.”
As I already touched on, Betnijah was not going to get a long runway to play herself back into form considering how she looked early in the season. Is that fair? How did the coaching staff handle this delicate situation? Well, considering it’s Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, you already know how die-hard Liberty fans are going to feel.
Of course, that’s not the only source of this ominous vibe hanging over a team that’s actually pretty good. It’s hard to grasp just how much better the WNBA, even with expansion, has become in the last five years or so. Every team has major talent, not to mention strategy + scouting continues to grow. Teams also play 44 games now, soon to be 50. Just ask the Aces: We have plenty of schedule losses, weeks without a practice, and ridiculous travel arrangements in 2026.
The New York Liberty went 2-20 in the 2020 Wubble as rookie Sabrina Ionescu suffered a major injury. The roster was stacked with All-Stars just a couple years later! That’s an inconceivable leap, and I think it came with a latent belief that New York should be beating the hell out of teams at every stop.
That’s no excuse for their 2-8 stretch earlier this season. They have played some terrible defense as well, they’ve thrown some terrible turnovers. I don’t want to dismiss the worry that Han Xu will be this team’s third big come playoff time, nor the fan reaction to Betnijah Laney-Hamilton’s departure.
If New York can’t rely on Leonie Fiebich and Satou Sabally down the stretch, they don’t have a championship ceiling. But we’re not there yet. By and large, fans and the media are not being positive enough about this Liberty team, a squad that’s won seven-of-eight, is 20-13, and could be the #4 seed before Wednesday morning. Hell, with 11 games to go, they are two games in the ‘L’ column behind the Las Vegas Aces, current owners of the #3 seed.
Their #4 ranked offense (virtually tied for #3) has been good all season and occasionally great despite surprisingly average 3-point shooting. They are the best defensive rebounding team in the league and slightly above average on the offensive glass. Breanna Stewart is a God. Their schedule leading up to the World Cup break is quite manageable in terms of both opponent quality and travel/rest.
The New York Liberty are not playing like the title-favorites they were in the preseason. But they’re playing well, even if the Las Vegas Aces didn’t meaningfully show up on Sunday. All of which to say: It’s pretty funny that the head coach is getting booed during intros.
