As the clock hit zeroes in overtime, clinching the New York Liberty’s first-ever WNBA title, Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones immediately found each other and embraced — one of the final brushstrokes of a masterpiece once thought impossible to commission.
“I’ve been manifesting this moment for a while. There’s no feeling like it,” Stewart said following the Liberty’s 67-62 clinching Game 5 win over the Minnesota Lynx. “To be able to bring a championship to New York, the first-ever in franchise history, it’s an incredible feeling.”
It also has been an incredible journey.
The New York Liberty had been stuck in the mud for five years and were in serious danger of drifting off into complete irrelevance within the Big Apple’s sports scene.
Banished by Madison Square Garden following the 2017 season, they played two seasons at the 5,000-seat Westchester County Center, putting up a paltry 17-51 record (.250 win percentage). In the COVID bubble in 2020, even with their shiny new No. 1 overall draft pick in the Oregon superstar, Sabrina Ionescu, the franchise hit an all-time low by winning just two of 22 games (2-20).
But out of the bubble, there came hope. The Liberty moved into the Barclays Center, home of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, and began to entrench themselves within a basketball-crazy community. They won 12 games in 2021 and four more the following season.
With money to spend, they made their move ahead of the 2023 season.
First, they acquired Jones, the 2021 WNBA MVP, from the Connecticut Sun in a three-team mega-deal. Parting ways with Rebecca Allen, Natasha Howard, and Crystal Dangerfield opened up even more cap space despite bringing on a superstar of Jones’ quality.
That allowed them to go out into free agency and bring in one of this generation’s greatest players in another former league MVP in Stewart, who rose to the elite ranks of the game with the Seattle Storm after a brilliant collegiate career at UConn.
“I told her this before, but I watched Stewie be great for so long,” Jones said of Stewart. “She was that person I was chasing.”
The Liberty had a superteam upon their union and fit that label to a tee. They went 32-8 last season but fell short in the WNBA Finals to the Las Vegas Aces but exacted revenge this year by bouncing the two-time defending champions out at the semifinal stage of the postseason.
The Minnesota Lynx pushed them to five “ugly,” games, as head coach Sandy Brondiello described, but Stewart hit controversial game-tying free throws at the end of regulation to force overtime. She then put the game away in the extra frame with two more from the charity stripe.
Jones capped off a WNBA Finals MVP performance with 17 points and six rebounds, willing the Liberty throughout a sluggish start to Game 5 that kept them in the game. The title is the first of Jones’ career after eight professional seasons.
“She led us. Her dominance in the paint, on the boards, help-side defense, everything we needed, she was there,” Stewart said of Jones. “She had to wait a while to get to this point, to win a championship. The wait was worth it.”
Those eight years of frustration and close calls all came out the moment Jones embraced Stewart, thus realizing the dream that they had concocted almost two years ago.
“When I hugged Stewie, I was just sobbing in her hair,” Jones said. “I didn’t say one word. I was just crying the whole time. I was just so happy to be able to win and do it with her. We talked about it so much of coming together and envisioning what we wanted to do in New York, what we could do. To be able to pull it off and accomplish the dream, which is so freakin’ hard to do, it just means a lot.”
Now the only thing left to do is celebrate, which the Liberty will do in style with events in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
“I can’t wait to continue celebrating with the city because I know it’s going to be bonkers,” Stewart said. “Bonkers.”
