{"id":374334,"date":"2026-10-15T23:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T23:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374334\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T23:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T23:54:21","slug":"liberty-star-breanna-stewart-makes-wnba-all-defensive-second-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374334\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty star Breanna Stewart makes WNBA All-Defensive Second Team"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the seventh consecutive season, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnba.com\/player\/1627668\/breanna-stewart\/profile\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Breanna Stewart<\/a> got recognized as one of the league\u2019s best defensive players.<\/p>\n<p>The Liberty star was selected to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnba.com\/watch\/video\/all-defensive-first-and-second-teams-2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WNBA All-Defensive<\/a> Second Team, the league announced Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Stewart joined Golden State\u2019s Veronica Burton and Kiah Stokes, Atlanta\u2019s Jordin Canada and Washington\u2019s Sonia Cintron for second-team honors.<\/p>\n<p>Atlanta Dream superstar and Defensive Player of the Winner Angel Reese headlined the All-Defensive First Team, which also included teammate Rhyne Howard, Washington\u2019s Shakira Austin, Golden State\u2019s Gabby Williams and Las Vegas\u2019 A\u2019ja Wilson.<\/p>\n<p>For Stewart, Thursday\u2019s announcement of the second-team honor made it the first time the two-time MVP didn\u2019t get named to All-Defensive First Team since 2021.<\/p>\n<p>And the 6-4 talent has been on an All-Defensive Team each season dating back to 2020 \u2014 her fourth season with the Seattle Storm.<\/p>\n<p>Stewart also was named to the All-Defensive Second Team in her rookie season (2016) with the Storm. She earned Rookie of the Year and placed sixth in MVP voting that season, too.<\/p>\n<p>In 2026, Stewart earned the All-Defensive Second Team nod after averaging 6.8 defensive rebounds, 1.4 steals and 1.3 blocks per game in 42 appearances with the Liberty. Her 20.8 points and 3.3 assists per game also came with Stewart as the focal point on both ends of the court.<\/p>\n<p>Stewart\u2019s length and defensive ability allowed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2026\/10\/10\/chris-demarco-liberty-breanna-stewart-jonquel-jones-sabrina-ionescu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Liberty head coach Chris DeMarco<\/a> to deploy a zone defense with the long-limbed star disrupting opposing offenses anywhere on the court.<\/p>\n<p>And she smothered most opponents \u2014 on the perimeter and in the paint \u2014 in any 1-on-1 coverage.<\/p>\n<p>During the regular season, the Liberty ranked seventh in points allowed per game (86.4) and opponent\u2019s field goal percentage (44.8).<\/p>\n<p>The league announced Stewart on the second team a day after the news of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2026\/10\/14\/liberty-guard-pauline-astier-makes-wnba-all-rookie-team\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Liberty rookie Pauline Astier making the WNBA All-Rookie Team.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the seventh consecutive season, Breanna Stewart got recognized as one of the league\u2019s best defensive players. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27066,14282,9,11,10,137763],"class_list":["post-374334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-breanna-stewart","tag-liberty","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-wnba-all-defensive-team"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374334","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=374334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}