It would prove to be the choice that put everything that followed into motion.
Still, in the weeks before she and Vandersloot would leave the only WNBA franchises they had played for, Jones had to make her own decision. For those reasons, plus one related to a personal homecoming, Stewart tells The Athletic, “When I (was) thinking about where I wanted to be this upcoming season, I could only think about New York.” Those within the franchise speak of loftier goals too: They want to be an organization that sets league-wide standards across all departments.
He means having Brondello, a former WNBA champion coach with the Phoenix Mercury, on the sideline at the Barclays Center and orchestrating calls in huddles.Įntering the 2023 WNBA season, which begins Friday, the Liberty aspire to win their first title in franchise history and New York City’s first in professional basketball since the Knicks in 1973. He means having star acquisitions complement recent All-Stars Sabrina Ionescu and Betnijah Laney. And we’re fortunate that we’re here.”īy “here,” Kolb means watching a training camp practice in which Stewart, Jones and Vandersloot all were wearing Liberty jerseys. “But the goal was let’s treat this like we will be in contention, and it’ll happen. “Did I know in ’19 that we would end up here? Absolutely not,” Kolb said. On home game days, the Liberty rented day rooms at a hotel in Westchester so players could rest north of New York City. That season, players lived in Brooklyn and practiced at St. The grains of New York’s historic offseason trace back to 2019, when the franchise was acquired by Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai and was still playing at the Westchester County Center. But it was in this meeting, Kolb said, “when we really got granular.” Brondello had never seriously considered adding Vandersloot before. He asked his team’s coaches about how the trio - which had made 12 combined All-Star appearances and six finals appearances - would fit with each other and within the context of the franchise. “There’s a world where this could happen,” Kolb recalls telling those in the room. In the August exit meeting, he also floated the possibility of adding Vandersloot, a record-setting point guard who had spent the first 12 years of her WNBA career with Chicago but, like Stewart, could be going elsewhere. Prior to the ’22 campaign, Jones told the Connecticut Sun front office that it might be her last season with the franchise, a situation Kolb had heard rumblings about. Stewart was set to become an unrestricted free agent and had met with New York brass the previous offseason. An ambitious undertaking, but one he felt was possible. New York would target three of the top players in the league heading into the winter. Kolb had written the names of three All-Star players on his office whiteboard: Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot.
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