{"id":164817,"date":"2025-09-23T22:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T22:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/164817\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T22:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T22:34:10","slug":"liberty-part-ways-with-sandy-brondello-wont-renew-her-contract-despite-2024-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/164817\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty part ways with Sandy Brondello, won&#8217;t renew her contract despite 2024 championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Liberty are moving on from head coach Sandy Brondello. The team announced Tuesday that it will not renew Brondello&#8217;s contract for next season, ending their partnership.<\/p>\n<p>The move comes one season after Brondello led the Liberty to their first WNBA championship.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The Liberty &#8220;considered nothing short of a championship to be a success this season,&#8221; <a data-i13n=\"cpos:1;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/alexaphilippou\/status\/1970604833548947757\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:ESPN&#039;s Alexa Philippou reported Tuesday;cpos:1;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">ESPN&#8217;s Alexa Philippou reported Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, the franchise thanked Brondello, acknowledging she leaves the team as the winningest coach in franchise history.<\/p>\n<p>After a fantastic eight-year run with the Phoenix Mercury, in which Brondello led the team to a championship in her first season, Brondello was hired by the Liberty ahead of the 2022 WNBA season.<\/p>\n<p>The Liberty experienced a rocky first year under Brondello before posting two straight seasons with a 32-8 record. While the team fell short of a championship in 2023, it bounced back to win it all in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The Liberty got out to a hot start in 2025, winning their first nine games. From there, however, the team went just 18-17 the rest of the way, falling to the fifth seed in the playoffs. They didn&#8217;t last long in the postseason, as the Liberty were eliminated by the Mercury on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Following that loss, Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu were asked about critics who believed Brondello should be fired. Stewart seemed <a data-i13n=\"cpos:2;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/NBA_NewYork\/status\/1969257524579676577\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:shocked by the idea;cpos:2;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">shocked by the idea<\/a>, muttering an expletive before shutting it down.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To anybody that kinda questions Sandy being here, this is a resilient group,&#8221; Stewart said. &#8220;And she has our back and we have hers. The way that she continued to kind of deal with the cards she was dealt was incredible. It wasn&#8217;t easy for anybody but she came in every day with a positive attitude and a mindset to put us in our best positions possible and best foot forward.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ionescu nodded along in agreement as Stewart defended Brondello. At the end of that answer, Stewart reiterated, &#8220;We have Sandy&#8217;s back.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>In four seasons with the Liberty, Brondello posted a 107-53 record. She won the WNBA coach of the month award three times during her tenure with the club, the most recent coming in May.<\/p>\n<p>The Liberty are expected to begin their coaching search immediately. With the move, four WNBA teams will search for a new head coach ahead of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Liberty are moving on from head coach Sandy Brondello. The team announced Tuesday that it&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[4657,49,48,7079,3461,4644,23760,82,23761,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-164817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-breanna-stewart","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-liberty","12":"tag-phoenix-mercury","13":"tag-sabrina-ionescu","14":"tag-sandy-brondello","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-the-liberty","17":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}