Meet the NEW New York Liberty

Breanna Stewart picks the Liberty, joining a good team that ALSO added Jonquel Jones. Incredible.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Liberty Leading the People, Eugene Delacroix, 1830

Breanna Stewart made her choice: the two-time Finals MVP and top-2 player in the world announced she will sign with the New York Liberty. This is the single biggest non-draft WNBA transaction in probably 3-4 years, maybe more. It follows the Liberty making maybe the third biggest non-draft WNBA transaction in a few years: trading for Jonquel Jones.

To recap: the Liberty currently have Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, Sabrina Ionescu and Betnijah Laney in their starting five, plus some other key pieces like Marine Johannes, Han Xu, Sami Whitcomb, Kayla Thornton, Michaela Onyenwere, DiDi Richards and Stefanie Dolson. The Liberty finished 4th in the 12-team league last season, and has effectively replaced Natasha Howard with Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart, two of the seven best players in the league. Maybe two of the five best. Maybe two of the three best!

There are probably more moves to make, and there is one All-Star caliber talent rumored to be considering the Liberty. Courtney VanderSloot announced on Wednesday that she is leaving the Chicago Sky (last star out please close the door) and is rumored to be weighing the Storm, Lynx and Liberty. I don’t really know how a Sloot-Sabrina backcourt would function but I don’t dislike it!

The context for all of this is that the Aces won the championship and then went out and signed Candace Parker. That’s an escalation. But the difference between the Aces signing Parker — who is 36 and for whom there have been retirement rumors for a couple years — and the Liberty acquiring Jones and Stewart — 29 and 28 years old respectively — is in what happens in 2024, 2025 and 2026. With Parker the Aces have A’ja Wilson (the best player in the world), Chelsea Gray, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young. I don’t think you can top that top five, even if Sloot lands in New York. But anything can happen in the all-too-brief WNBA playoffs, and if you presume that Parker is heading out of the league, New York’s ascension becomes more viable.

The other context for this is why Stewart says she picked the Liberty. From ESPN:

"It's been a roller coaster of emotions for sure, and I decided to go to New York because I want to continue to be great," Stewart told Malika Andrews on ESPN's "SportsCenter." "I want to go to the place where I can continue to help this league become better, to continue to raise the standard.

"I feel like, why not go to the biggest market in all of sports, and I'm really excited to go after their first championship."

There’s going to be a lot to unpack in this for us WNBA observers and the WNBA itself.

I think the Liberty might be the best team in the WNBA right now: Stewart and Jones is an impossibly good top-2, and Ionescu (a 2022 All-Star) and Laney (a 2021 All-Star) are almost too good to be third and fourth options. My mind is racing just thinking through the match-ups and implications: I’ll take 40 games of Liberty vs. Aces, please.

And honestly, we might need that because when all of the stars are collecting in a few spots … woe be the other squads.

It’ll be interesting to see where Seattle goes from here, with Sue Bird retiring and Stewie heading East. Jewell Loyd is an unquestioned star, and if they do pick up Sloot that’s a potential playoff team. But the contending days are done for now. Three seasons out from a title with a generational superstar in hand and now … oof.

The WNBA season is (painfully) three months away.