{"id":576064,"date":"2026-04-01T22:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/576064\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T22:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:33:09","slug":"breanna-stewart-sabrina-ionescu-stay-loyal-to-liberty-amid-record-breaking-wnba-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/576064\/","title":{"rendered":"Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu stay loyal to Liberty amid record-breaking WNBA free agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu plan on being with the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/basketball\/wnba\/teams\/new-york-liberty\/\" class=\"sn-team-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-team=\"new-york-liberty\" data-league=\"wnba\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">New York Liberty<\/a>\u00a0for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>Stewart announced Wednesday on her podcast, \u201cGame Recognize Game with Stewie and Myles,\u201d that she&#8217;s steadfast on staying with New York instead of exploring free agency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to just set the record straight here,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I will be staying in New York. I\u2019m not planning on taking any free agency meetings, even though I am an unrestricted free agent. My family is set up here. We\u2019re solid here&#8230; I\u2019m going to be back in New York, and that\u2019s all there is to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ionescu\u00a0later said at USA Basketball camp that she, too, is not going anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m where I&#8217;m supposed to be. I never thought anything different,\u201d Ionescu said Wednesday. \u201cExcited to get all this (CBA negotiations), you know, behind us and to be able to start our season and get going in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stewart and Ionescu could potentially be million-dollar players for the Liberty as the\u00a0new CBA\u00a0has major salary bumps and a supermax salary of nearly $1.4 million.<\/p>\n<p>Both players helped lead the franchise to its first championship in 2024. The team lost to Phoenix in the quarterfinals of the playoffs this past season.<\/p>\n<p>While Stewart and Ionescu are staying put, the Liberty face uncertainty about the rest of their team. More than 80% of the league are free agents this year, as many players have expiring contracts or opted out of the previous collective bargaining agreement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it\u2019s going to be difficult because you\u2019re kind of, you know, forcing players and teams to make decisions really quickly,&#8221; Ionescu said. \u201cThey kind of had to prepare for a quick flip and a short amount of time with decisions being made in free agency being such a short window, but I do think we&#8217;re going to see a lot of change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The league has not yet announced when free agency will start. The regular season begins on May 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu plan on being with the\u00a0New York Liberty\u00a0for a long time. Stewart announced Wednesday&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-576064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576064","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=576064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}