{"id":272733,"date":"2026-06-20T17:37:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T17:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/272733\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T17:37:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T17:37:22","slug":"han-xu-is-beloved-liberty-teammate-more-confident-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/272733\/","title":{"rendered":"Han Xu is beloved Liberty teammate, more confident player"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHICAGO \u2014 Rebecca Allen met Han Xu when she was 19. Han had just arrived in New York after the Liberty picked her No. 14 overall in the 2019 WNBA draft.<\/p>\n<p>The situation Han was stepping into would be tough for anyone.\u00a0At such a young age, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2019\/05\/06\/libertys-teenage-rookie-embracing-pressure-of-yao-ming-comparisons\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">she moved nearly 7,000 miles away from home<\/a> in China to a foreign country, where she knew practically no one and didn\u2019t speak the language.\u00a0That took courage.<\/p>\n<p>Seven years later, Han and Allen are reunited as teammates in New York. Han has grown up \u2014 both literally and figuratively. The 26-year-old has <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/24\/sports\/taller-han-xu-brings-a-dangerous-combination-in-liberty-return\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sprouted another two inches since her rookie season<\/a>, now standing at 6-foot-11. She\u2019s stronger and improving each day.<\/p>\n<p>But the biggest difference from Han as a rookie to now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 Rebecca Allen met Han Xu when she was 19. Han had just arrived in New York&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[105086,9,11,8915,10,4780,319,428,11452],"class_list":["post-272733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-inside-the-liberty","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-new-york-news","tag-post-sports-newsletters","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}