{"id":557972,"date":"2026-03-24T18:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T18:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/557972\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T18:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T18:00:12","slug":"why-the-liberty-might-not-be-able-to-keep-breanna-stewart-and-sabrina-ionescu-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/557972\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Liberty might not be able to keep Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu together"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The WNBA&#8217;s new collective bargaining agreement has brought historic pay increases to the league&#8217;s players.<\/p>\n<p>It also might lead to salary cap chaos for its teams, particularly the star-laden New York Liberty.<\/p>\n<p>The Liberty, WNBA champions in 2024, face an unenviable task of keeping its &#8220;Big Three&#8221; &#8212; Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart &#8212; together in 2026 and beyond.<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/ca\/wnba\/indiana-fever\/news\/caitlin-clark-free-agent-why-wnba-free-agent-frenzy-could-realign-league\/9967c2aca93dfd7e3d7dc67e\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Is Caitlin Clark a free agent? Why WNBA free agent &#8216;frenzy&#8217; could realign the league<\/a><\/p>\n<p>All three players &#8212; two of whom are former MVPs &#8212; are free agents. And all three are eligible to sign supermax contracts starting at $1.4 million.<\/p>\n<p>The new salary cap in the WNBA is set at around $7 million. Bringing all three of Ionescu, Jones and Stewart back on supermaxes would chew up more than half of New York&#8217;s cap space.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The pathway to re-sign Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones is challenging but not impossible.<\/p>\n<p>A look into some of the numbers thanks to the new CBA: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/xxwoeqetIf\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/t.co\/xxwoeqetIf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Madeline Kenney (@madkenney) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/madkenney\/status\/2036450512694902923?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">March 24, 2026<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>The New York Post&#8217;s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/23\/sports\/wnbas-new-cba-creates-challenge-for-liberty-to-keep-big-3\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Madeline Kenney<\/a> reports that Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb could like to sign the star trio to long-term contracts, thus mitigating the short-term cap hit and allowing New York to retain other key contributors like Leonie Fiebich and Nyara Sabally.<\/p>\n<p>However, it is unlikely that someone like Stewart &#8212; who fought particularly hard in CBA talks for higher salaries as a WNBPA executive committee member &#8212; would be interested in sacrificing millions just as historic cash flow enters the league.<\/p>\n<p>It creates a fascinating scenario with the Liberty: will Kolb be able to move forward with all three players? Which one or two might he prioritize if talks become tense?<\/p>\n<p>Only time will tell.<\/p>\n<p>More WNBA news:<\/p>\n<p>                            <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA&#8217;s new collective bargaining agreement has brought historic pay increases to the league&#8217;s players. It also might&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-557972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557972","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=557972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}