![\"Sandy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/f74ed50ab3b1f5d3f9bd98a0ad4e31c48d38a8c1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nLast year, Opals coach Sandy Brondello led her WNBA team, the New York Liberty, to their first championship win. Last month, she set the record for the most regular season wins of any coach in the franchise\u2019s 28-year history. On Wednesday morning, she was sacked.<\/p>\n
The Liberty announced Brondello\u2019s departure on Wednesday after the Liberty were knocked out early in the first round of playoffs last weekend. They had finished fifth of 13 teams in the regular season.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sandy Brondello in the second game of the playoffs against the Phoenix Mercury last week. Credit: AP<\/p>\n
A favourite among her players, star forward Breanna Stewart swore at a reporter when asked in their post-game press conference on Saturday whether the Liberty should part ways with Brondello. Under her breath, Stewart responded to the question by saying, \u201cWhat the f—?\u201d Before continuing: \u201cTo anybody that questions Sandy being here, this is a resilient group, and she has our back, and we have hers…\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to be a team that points fingers,\u201d Stewart went on to say. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of us that could have done better this season, but we\u2019re still going to fight and show up for each other every single day and I think that\u2019s the most important part. So, we have Sandy\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brondello joined the Liberty ahead of the 2022 season taking them to two WNBA finals \u2013 in 2023 and again 2024 when they won the championship. Before Brondello was coach, the Liberty had exited in the first round of playoffs for two successive years and had failed to make the playoffs the three years before that.<\/p>\n
During her tenure, she led the Liberty to 101 regular season wins and just 53 losses \u2013 the most wins of any coach in the team\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
The Liberty began their season with a nine-game winning streak \u2013 the best in team history \u2013 before injuries to stars Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones.<\/p>\n
In a text message to the Associated Press on Wednesday, Brondello said: \u201cIt has been a privilege to have coached the NY Liberty these last four years. Bringing the first-ever championship to New York will always be the most amazing feeling. I wish the team and organisation more success moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, Opals coach Sandy Brondello led her WNBA team, the New York Liberty, to their first championship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-165328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}