The best WNBA free agent to switch teams this offseason has been Satou Sabally.
As is often the case, the rich get richer, with Sabally signing with the superteam New York Liberty.
We all know the Liberty’s best player, Breanna Stewart, hates to lose. She’s not very accustomed to it, having won the national championship all four years of college and having gone 3-for-6 winning it all when healthy for the playoffs during her WNBA prime.
Last year was one of
the years she came up short. The Liberty looked like the best team in the league during their 9-0 start, but injuries throughout the season caused them to fall to the No. 5-seed, and they couldn’t take care of business in the first round of the playoffs despite being healthy, falling to Sabally’s Phoenix Mercury.
The entire Liberty organization shares Stewart’s view that anything shy of a championship is unacceptable. So much so that they made the questionable decision to fire a two-time WNBA-champion head coach in Sandy Brondello. So it’s no surprise that New York swung for the fences in free agency, bringing in a superstar reinforcement to add to the superteam of Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton that was formed prior to the 2023 season.
On Sabally’s end, it’s no surprise that she’s chasing a ring. Though she won a EuroLeague Women championship with Fenerbahçe Alagöz Holding in 2023, she’s never won it all in the WNBA or college.
She played at Oregon with Ionescu, went to the Final Four in 2019 and helped lead the Ducks to a final ranking of No. 2 in 2020. She averaged 18.4 points, 8.6 rebounds and two blocks while shooting 50 percent from the field and 37.1 percent from 3 in the 2019 NCAA Tournament, with Oregon falling by just five points to eventual champ Baylor in the national semifinal. Ionescu returned the next year with unfinished business and it seemed like she was perhaps on track to come up clutch in the tourney and steal the natty away from No. 1-ranked South Carolina, but she and Sabally were denied the opportunity when the tournament was canceled due to COVID. Heartbreaking.
Now, the unfinished business of winning a championship together shifts to Brooklyn. They’ve reunited, like they did at Unrivaled in 2025, to help Sabally reach the mountain top that Ionescu reached in 2024, when the Liberty won the WNBA Finals. In the W, Sabally’s teams have been to the playoffs four out of six years and to the semis twice; her Mercury were swept in her one Finals appearance last year.
There’s no question that Sabally can make a huge impact for the already-loaded Liberty
While letting go of Brondello might not seem like the greatest idea, some sort of change seemed needed this offseason in order for New York to keep up with the Las Vegas Aces, who overcame a slow start to rise to their third title in four years behind the best player in the world in A’ja Wilson and a stellar supporting cast. They, too, are a superteam.
The Minnesota Lynx, Atlanta Dream and Mercury also finished ahead of the Liberty in last year’s standings. Well, NY swiped Sabally away from Phoenix, likely preventing the desert dwellers from making a run at the chip. But the Lynx, despite losing some key pieces, are always formidable as long as they’ve got Napheesa Collier and Cheryl Reeve, and the Dream have only gotten better with the addition of Angel Reese. You also have to factor in the Indiana Fever, who pushed Vegas to overtime of Game 5 in the semis despite not having Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham, who are now ready to return.
The addition of Sabally is good change, and will give the Liberty the opportunity to conquer these foes.
The soon-to-be 28-year-old has always had incredible upside. She entered the 2020 WNBA Draft after her junior year in Eugene and went No. 2 overall after Ionescu went No. 1. Back then, she was considered the most pro-ready prospect in her class, and went on to finish third in Rookie of the Year voting with 13.9 points and 7.8 boards per game for the Dallas Wings. She has continued to live up to high expectations. Though injuries have limited her to just two full seasons, they’ve been good ones. In 2023, she finished fifth in MVP voting and was named All-WNBA First Team and Most Improved Player after averaging 18.6 points, 8.1 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 1.8 steals. Last year, in her other full season, she was selected to the All-Star Game and averaged 16.3 points.
After the Mercury acquired Sabally in a trade prior to last season, many felt they would be a pretty good team. That those sentiments came before the team’s largely unknown role players started stepping up speaks to just how highly-regarded Sabally was. She, Alyssa Thomas and Kahleah Copper, surrounded by very little proven talent, were considered formidable. Similar optimism should surround the Liberty now.
Neither Stewart nor Ionescu tested the waters in free agency, and Jones, Laney-Hamilton and Leonie Fiebich will be back as well. (Laney-Hamilton missed all of last year with a meniscus injury.) It is unlikely that Natasha Cloud and Emma Meesseman will return, but, with Sabally, the Liberty have a phenomenal top six.
However, Sabally has to stay healthy. The last time we saw her on a WNBA court, she suffered a nasty concussion that ended her season in the Finals and kept her out for all of Unrivaled. Hopefully she will be able to perform at her best this year.
She also has to become a consistently elite 3-point shooter. She’s been above 40 percent at times (45.2 on 84 attempts in 2024 and 41.1 on 197 as a sophomore at Oregon), but well below 30 other times (23.3 on 43 in 2022 and 19.7 on 66 in 2020).
Look for Satou to shine under the bright lights of NYC
Sabally likely chose the Liberty because of their competitiveness in the championship race and to reunite with Ionescu. The bright lights of New York City may not have been the reason, but she gets to enjoy them now.
Though she was taken by the Toronto Tempo in the expansion draft, Satou’s younger sister, Nyara, played all three of her WNBA seasons to date in NYC and will forever be remembered in the city for her role in securing the 2024 championship. So the Big Apple already means something to the Sabally family; perhaps Satou will get hooked on its ever-enduring appeal and make it a long-term home.
For now, Liberty fans have another exciting superstar to cheer for as the New York superteam era continues.
