Leonie Fiebich has made the New York Liberty whole
Photo by Maximilian Haupt/picture alliance via Getty Images
An under-the-radar rookie has turned out to be the dominant New York Liberty’s fourth-best player this season. Huh. Leonie Fiebich has caught fire in her last two games, shooting 75% from the floor and 75% from three. Thing is, she’s taken four shots in total.
Even in the game prior, a loss to the Connecticut Sun, Fiebich only took seven shots despite being the sole New York Liberty that could throw it in the ocean that night. She made five of them, including 2-of-3 from deep; the rest of her teammates shot 19-of-58 from the floor, 5-of-29 from three. Gross.
She reeled off ten straight points for an otherwise-dead Liberty team in the third quarter of that loss, then attempted one shot in the fourth quarter. Fiebich has the fourth-best TS% on New York, but only Nyara Sabally, a true rim-rolling big, takes fewer shots on a per-possession basis than the 6’4” 2-guard.
So, what am I getting at here? Is Fiebich lacking confidence? Do her teammates not get her the ball? No, nothing like that. What could scan as passivity is actually the feature of Leonie Fiebich’s game that’s driven her to, in one sense, the WNBA’s most impressive rookie season.
IN ONE SENSE, I said. That sense is not box-score production, obviously, nor shouldering a burden of offensive creation. The Chicago Sky’s offense flat-lines without offensive rebounding, and I think you know who their best offensive rebounder is. Rickea Jackson is averaging 16 points since the start of July. Caitlin Clark.
And while I promise this piece doesn’t exist to get into the down-ballot weeds of awards-season, Leonie Fiebich’s impact as a rookie is exceedingly rare: She doesn’t make negative plays. Just won't do it.
The New York Liberty are tracking to be an all-time great WNBA team, given their 26-6 record and +12.0 net rating, a mark matched only seven times since the inaugural reign of the Houston Comets. Fiebich has played the fourth-most minutes on the team in 2024 — behind the three stars — and the Liberty are eight points per 100 possessions better with her on the court. She is the main reason neither Courtney Vandersloot nor Betnijah Laney-Hamilton missing a chunk of games slowed this team down.
Fiebich’s overseas pedigree — an Olympics appearance this summer and the two-time MVP of the Spanish league — told us all we needed to know about her talent. But it didn’t prepare us for the way she frequently dominates on the margins.
“She’s going over to Europe and being a star over there, and a really strong lead in the Spanish league,” said Sandy Brondello. “As a young player, it’s going over there and knowing, ‘okay, I’m pretty good, and I can do both sides of the ball, I can carry a team.’ But she plays the game in the right way, and I think that’s what I love the most about her. She’s working out a really nice role for us here, and it’s been very impactful.”
That impact doesn’t feature loud scoring outbursts, but a consistent accumulation of winning plays.
Her defensive highlights include stifling Caitlin Clark and Olympic teammate Satou Sabally at the point-of-attack, making rotations on the back-line to get stops at the rim, and everything in between...
When Brondello no longer asks her to fight through screens and instead switch them against a hyper-active team like the Minnesota Lynx, the 6’4” Fiebich credibly hangs with Napheesa Collier in the post...
Only a handful of these plays can be accounted for in the stat-sheet.
Rightfully, much been made of the Liberty’s newfound ability to play menacingly long lineups. Sabrina Ionescu excelling as an offensive creator in 2024 is huge here, allowing Laney-Hamtilon and Kayla Thornton to share the court without sacrificing much on offense, for example. Still, the Libs could have turned to that lineup last season, and rarely did. Without Fiebich’s 664 quality minutes this season, do the Libs still have this card up their sleeve?
Source: PBP Stats
Fiebich did not roar out of the gates, offensively. She was a late-arrival to New York’s training camp, and even though she got minutes early in the season, there was a little oomph missing.
“I don’t think I’m fully confident in where I have to be, always, on the court,” Fiebich said back in May. “It’s still a process of trying to figure out, when you’re on the court with what people what players, ‘where’s my spot?’ It’s also, for a shooter, always a little bit hard to come off the bench and knock down the first shot. That’s definitely something I need to get better at, but I think it’s a process and it’s going in a good direction.”
Defense kept her on the court, but she didn’t look like a player capable of carrying an offensive load that warrants to back-to-back MVP awards in Europe. And now, she was getting cleaner looks created by teammates that had led one of the greatest regular-season offenses in professional basketball history the summer earlier.
‘I understand that it takes time to settle in, but you’re 6’4”,’ I thought. ‘Shouldn’t you just be shooting over these fools?’
Sandy Brondello assured me that Fiebich’s offense would come in time, but also made sure to set me straight, saying the German “can do more than just shoot threes.”
Big surprise, Sandy was right. Fiebich wasn’t looking to get her own within the Liberty offense, but rather to make the right play, and once she figured out how and when those plays would happen, her game took off.
In addition to picking loose change in transition and on offensive rebounds, Fiebich started flowing into dribble-handoffs, driving open lanes or making the next pass when help defense stepped up. When defenders starting to go under, she’d pull off-the-dribble threes. Then, we quickly got all the way to disrespectful, ‘hand-down man-down’ attempts, and a complete offensive player emerged...
With just eight games left on the regular-season schedule, take a guess who’s leading the New York Liberty in 3-point percentage at 39.6.
Leonie Fiebich is an example of the WNBA talent boom that’s still in its early stages. There are not just otherworldly prospects rising through the NCAA ranks, but — as we saw on the men’s side over the past two decades — a proliferation of international talent. And the Liberty just plucked a vital piece to a 26-6 team ball out of a bucket labeled ‘spare trade parts...’
New York Liberty
League-wide talent identification may not be there yet, but my goodness the talent is coming.
Yet, Fiebich’s game is understated. Perhaps it'd be different if she debuted on a bad team in desperate need of excitement and offensive creation. Maybe she’d be taking 15 shots a game, filling the box-score. Not that there’s any inherent flaw to rookies who find themselves in that sort of situation doing everything they can to excel.
Still, Fiebich was given a chance to play on a bona fide contender, and all she’s done is amplify the star-talent around her. You have close out hard to her, you have to help off one of the stars when she drives the lane, to whom she’ll make the correct pass. Fiebich will bother your best ball-handler 35 feet from the basket, but bring a ball-screen to free her up, and here comes Jonquel Jones or Breanna Stewart to wreak even more havoc. When those two are helping somebody else on the perimeter, Fiebich will rotate over to box-out Brionna Jones down low.
It’s been an uncommonly solid, dependable year from a rookie, and though she does have considerable overseas experience, she’s only about a year older than most of her fellow 2024 classmates.
But listen, she’s averaging 6/3/2. That’s not going to catch anyone’s eye. The last spot on the WNBA All-Rookie Team feels safe, but nothing beyond that. ESPN recently named her the front-runner for Sixth Player of the Year, but given that the majority of her best games have come as a starter, some voters may reject that notion.
Fiebich also cannot start more than five games the rest of the season if she wants to maintain eligibility for that award, and well, she’s been so good that she’s still starting even with Laney-Hamilton back in the fold.
This, though doesn’t feel right ... to discuss individual awards for Leonie Fiebich like this. That’s not what her season — a steady build-up of timely shots and winning plays — has been about.
If it was, she wouldn’t be this good.
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