The new coach with the four NBA championship rings stood in front of the bench, providing direction in his WNBA debut. The familiar face from the WNBA’s 2024 championship team was moving well after a year off. But the new fourth star in the constellation wasn’t able to play.
The 30th season of Liberty basketball tipped off Friday night against Connecticut at Barclays Center.
There are a few new elements in play for the Liberty. They hope that the end of this journey will be more like the one two seasons ago when the confetti fell as opposed to the end of last season when the team fell out of the playoffs in the opening round.
“We’re playing to win,” said Breanna Stewart, the two-time league MVP. “We know that we got bounced out early last year and don’t want that to happen again.”
The Liberty re-signed the Big Three of Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Sabrina Ionescu and added Satou Sabally as that fourth star. All the stars weren’t out, though. Ionescu is supposed to miss at least the first four games with a left foot injury. And Sabally missed the opener due to a cyst.
Sandy Brondello wasn’t in the mix, either. The coach was let go following last season and moved on to the expansion Toronto Tempo. It was a very good four-year run overall for her — 107-53 record, four playoff appearances, two trips to the title round and one parade. She’s the winningest coach in franchise history.
Enter Chris DeMarco.
His past 14 seasons were with Golden State, 11 as an assistant coach under Steve Kerr. The championships came in 2025, 2017, 2018 and 2022.
The new coach has a firm idea of what he wants the Liberty’s ID to be.
“More than anything, I want to compete,” DeMarco said. “I think it’s all about competition. But I want to be connected, and I want to be unselfish.”
As part of an annual survey, the WNBA GMs picked the Liberty as the second-most likely team to claim the title behind defending champ Las Vegas.
The GMs also cast their vote for the most surprising offseason move. The winner? The Liberty signing Sabally.
The 6-4 forward is a three-time All-Star, bringing averages of 15.9 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists over six seasons.
“Adding Satou to a pretty loaded roster already is really exciting,” Stewart said. “I think that the biggest part from that is now, when it looks good on paper, making it actually look good on the court, and we’ve all been really invested in doing that in training camp and having a selfless mentality.
“Satou brings size, versatility and just another option for us to kind of go through on both ends of the court.”
Betnijah Laney-Hamilton was off the court in 2025. This Connecticut game marked the 32-year-old guard/forward’s first that counted since Game 5 of the 2024 Finals. The league leader in average plus-minus that season sat out last season due to knee surgery.
“It’s never easy to go through rehab and stuff, but I’ve had a lot of time off,” Laney-Hamilton said. “And so I’ve had the opportunity to really work on things, work on my body.”
Besides Ionescu and Sabally, the Liberty were missing Leonie Fiebich, a starter last season, and new reserve forward/center Raquel Carrera. They’re still with their Spanish team. Rebecca Allen, back for a third stint here, was also out with a leg injury.
So the Liberty started a backcourt of French imports, Marine Johannes and promising rookie point guard Pauline Astier.
“I feel comfortable because of the team, because of the coaches,” Astier said.
Forward Aubrey Griffin, a native of Ossining in Westchester, and point guard Julie Vanloo were signed to hardship contracts to have nine available players.
“I’ve been working for this my whole career, so I definitely will take advantage of the opportunity,” said Griffin, who played at UConn and sat out last season due to knee surgery after being a third-round pick by Minnesota.
The Liberty also have another reserve back for a third stint — 6-11 Han Xu.
“What excites me most is our depth and our versatility,” Stewart said, “and I think that’s what kind of makes us most unique.”
Brian Heyman covers high school, college and pro sports. He joined Newsday in 2021 and previously worked as a sportswriter for The Journal News in White Plains and The Hudson Dispatch in Union City, New Jersey. His work has appeared in The New York Times, MLB.com and Baseball Digest magazine.