New York Liberty training camp begins with single-minded focus: depth
Photo by David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images
2023 taught us that the New York Liberty’s star-studded starting five is as good as advertised. It taught them that they need more than that to win a title. The New York Liberty are officially in year two of championship expectations, having come oh-so-close to accomplishing the mission in year one. Instead, they lost an excruciating, nail-biting, gut-wrenching Game 4 of the WNBA Finals on their home floor to the then-and-still defending champion Las Vegas Aces.
Bummer in Brooklyn. The Liberty blow a 12 point 2nd half lead and lose to the Aces 70-69 in Game 4. Las Vegas: 1st back-to-back WNBA Champions in 21 years. #WNBAFinals pic.twitter.com/JfLNmKhhzV— Ryan Field (@RyanFieldABC) October 19, 2023
But whether it was the six-month offseason or a cheery first three days of training camp now completed, the pain is gone from the Barclays Center. There is no room for it, anyway. The ultimate goal — a championship — may remain the same, but a new focus has arrived for the Liberty.
In 2023, Head Coach Sandy Brondello was tasked with connecting a brand-new starting five, with only Sabrina Ionescu and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton returning from the prior season. And the Liberty weren’t exactly sprinkling low-usage role players around the incumbents either: in came Courtney Vandersloot, Breanna Stewart, and Jonquel Jones. Certainly an upper-class problem, but a problem nonetheless.
Even with all the talent at their disposal, Brondello and her staff aced the assignment. High-low action between Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart laid the foundation for the league’s No. 2 offense, as Laney-Hamilton ultimately became the slashing, shooting, connective wing you’d design in a lab, and Vandersloot and Ionescu turned into constant screen-setters all over the court in addition to being lead ball-handlers.
But Brondello’s most important solution was also her simplest: Play those five together. A lot.
New York’s starters played 769 minutes together in 2023, including the playoffs, far more than any other unit in the WNBA. While Jonquel Jones spent the first half of the season recovering from a foot injury, she played every night, and the Libs as a whole avoided the injury bug en route to building serious chemistry.
Says Brondello of her approach: “You have to make a choice, don’t you? What do we need to be successful? And it was: We’ve got these really key players, and it took time. You can’t just say, ‘we’re going to snap the fingers and gonna know—’ it took, ‘how does it work? What’s it look like? Where can we add or be flexible or adapt?’ And I think we did that.”
The Liberty surely did do that, with those five outscoring opponents by 19 points per 100 possessions in the regular season. Yet, that number fell to just 6.2 in 246 postseason minutes. Some of that was improved competition, surely, but the signs of fatigue were undeniable.
Stewart played 34.7 minutes a night in the regular season, inflated by some Herculean performances pre-All-Star break, as the Liberty were still figuring things out. She carried them to wins as if she was on the antithesis of a superteam, which won her another MVP award, but perhaps came home to roost in October.
She shot an gaze-averting 35.8% from the floor in the playoffs, including just 19.6% from deep on 4.6 attempts per game. (Stewart shot 47.5% on the same 3-point volume in her five-year playoff career in Seattle.) The numbers merely confirmed what the film screamed: She was exhausted.
Breanna Stewart in today’s Game 4 WNBA Finals loss:10 points3-17 (17.6%) shooting What’s next for one of the league’s brightest superstars? pic.twitter.com/K1MklX52aX— Reid (@reidwinterfb) October 19, 2023
While the Liberty did win 32 games last season, Brondello acknowledges that her team’s legs may have started to go by the playoffs, and has vowed to do things differently this season: “You need depth in this league, you need versatility. It’s a long, compact season. We start with five [games] in 10 days so, our starters probably all want to play a lot but we’ve got to be — I’ve got to be smarter this year, you know, not to kill them too early.”
And so, the New York Liberty’s main focus entering year two has taken shape. The starting five will continue to dominate, potentially bolstered by Jonquel Jones beginning this season with full health. But it’s about finding second and third units that will carry them through the regular season, and form wild cards to play in the postseason.
“We can grow on it now, [the starters] are solidified,” said Brondello after practice on Monday. “Now, how do we build the bench into complementary pieces to what we have? And I think we do, I think we have good versatility. We have good toughness. We have some good draft picks, and then we just have to see how it all evolves and what we need to make sure that anytime, if someone goes down, we can cover for it.”
One of those draft-picks is first-rounder Marquesha Davis, a six-foot guard from Ole Miss with a questionable jumper but unassailable length, speed, and driving ability, some of which she’s already showing off in her first week as a pro...
TUFF @MarqueshaDavis pic.twitter.com/62uCL6wk3j— New York Liberty (@nyliberty) April 29, 2024
If the Davis selection wasn’t emblematic of General Manager Jonathan Kolb’s vision for the 2024 roster, his other additions certainly were. Davis will likely be competing with the 5’11” Ivana Dojkić — who hasn't yet arrived to camp due to Euroleague playoffs — for the third guard spot, and while the Croatian is no small guard, she’s the tiniest addition to the roster.
There’s Leonie Fiebich, another late arrival who brings sharp-shooting ability in a 6’4” frame, and Kennedy Burke, another athletic guard/wing who likes to drive the rock...
Kennedy Burke is Let's wish a very happy birthday to one of the key players in ESBVA's unbelievable run to the #EuroLeagueWomen Quarter Finals pic.twitter.com/UIuBTPgRRd— EuroLeague Women (@EuroLeagueWomen) February 14, 2024
You see where this is going.
“I hate to use buzzwords — I really, truly do,” says Kolb, “but it is all about versatility. I think you can see we’ve got many players that can slide up and slide down, and that’s what you want to do. And I think that is the vision for [the bench] ... we’re bigger and longer. That’s what we want to insulate this group with.”
This is not a surprising vision in a season after the Liberty’s three main bench players were Marine Johannès, a dazzling guard who did not offer a ton in the way of rim-pressure or defense, Stef Dolson, a traditional center who was an afterthought in the playoff rotation, and Kayla Thornton. While Johannès will likely remain in France this season and Dolson has left for Washington DC, Thornton is back on a two-year extension after being the most reliable Liberty reserve, a voracious wing defender whose style of play is accurately represented by her shoulders, bis, and tris.
Surrounding Thornton with like-minded athletes who have varying degrees of ball-handling and shooting skills provides the seafoam with options. That just leaves the backup-center position a tad wobbly, currently occupied Nyara Sabally, who recovered from a redshirt rookie season with a campaign of flashes, but not much more, in 2023.
That covers the 2024 New York Liberty, at least to start the season. Jonathan Kolb confirmed as much when speaking to the media on Monday, saying that he aims to exit training camp with 11 players, staying under the salary cap, and will “hopefully” be able to add a 12th sometime this summer, depending on injuries and potential hardship exceptions. While surprises can happen, the initial 11 seem set:
Kennedy Burke
Marquesha Davis
Ivana Dojkić
Leonie Fiebich
Sabrina Ionescu
Jonquel Jones
Betnijah Laney
Nyara Sabally
Breanna Stewart
Kayla Thornton
Courtney Vandersloot
The focus does too. The Liberty were an offensive marvel last season, generating open threes and post touches behind head-snapping ball-movement, and falling back on Breanna Stewart isolations when necessary. But Stewie ran out of gas, and the Las Vegas Aces shut off paint penetration by Ionescu and Vandersloot, who couldn’t return the favor on the other end.
Still, the Liberty didn’t panic this offseason; the core is the same, and is sure to run over opponents in the coming months. But if last season taught them anything, it’s that one starting unit, no matter how good, isn’t enough to win a title. Will a bet on more length, athleticism, and driving ability off the bench pay dividends? Only time will tell, but that is the key question as the New York Liberty enter 2024.
Says Brondello: “We needed more versatility. I think we’ve added that. Now it’s about what works best with the players that we have, and how do we continue to build? That’s exciting for a coach.”
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