The Liberty had just suffered a gut punching Game 3 loss to the Mercury in the first round of the 2025 WNBA playoffs after a year enduring injury after injury without much continuity.
Just days later, Kolb decided not to pick up the option of the team’s head coach at the time, Sandy Brondello. Her firing came as a result of multiple irreconcilable differences including play style and rotation patterns that bubbled up when the Liberty struggled with consistency in 2025. Brondello has noted in multiple interviews following being hired as the first head coach in Toronto Tempo history, just a month after her firing, that she was missing “partnership” toward the end of her tenure in New York.
“I just felt that it probably wasn’t the right fit anymore, to be quite honest,” Brondello said on Sue Bird’s “Bird’s Eye View” podcast episode that was released on Halloween. “And obviously, it was a leadership decision there. And I work best when I’m in a partnership.”
Closing the door on Brondello’s tenure in New York came with a lot of risk, especially amid Kolb’s desire to compete with the Las Vegas Aces to be another dynastic franchise in an effort to define the WNBA’s current era.
“This is not a one year and done situation with what we’re building here,” he said while in that losing locker room in Phoenix. “This has been multiple years in the making, and last year we got it done. But it’s these moments of pain for everything that we collectively have gone through … this is our fuel.”
Continuity is a key component of accomplishing that, and having a new voice in 2026 and beyond makes the learning curve not only steep but also laced with pressure. But Kolb understood this when he noted in his Sept. 25 press conference that the team needed to nail this decision. “If we’re going to make a bold decision like this,” he said, “our players deserve to get the best.”
But now Kolb, director of player relations & community engagement Epiphanny Prince, director of player development Andrew Wade, director of player personnel Dustin Gray and assistant video & scouting coordinator Parker Lovett have gone through multiple rounds of interviews. They’ve included initial zoom conversations, panel discussions where candidates would read and react to game situations and previous game film, and then in-person meetings with Wu Tsai. The question now lingers — who, according to the Liberty, is the best fit?
The franchise has, via NBA reporter Jake Fischer, reportedly narrowed down their candidates to a top three, all of whom have NBA experience. Those final contenders are long-time NBA assistant and former G League and NBL head coach Will Weaver, current Raptors assistant Jama Mahlalela and Kristi Toliver, a 2X WNBA champion and current associate head coach of the Phoenix Mercury.
While Weaver, Mahlalela and Toliver all do have NBA experience in common and are all below the age of 50, they all pose different arrays of advantages and limitations. While Kolb, his staff, team ownership, and presumably the franchises’ star players weigh their options with a final decision on the horizon, below are explanations of how each candidate may fit.
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Will Weaver — coaching advisor for the Charlotte Hornets
Weaver was someone who appeared on coaching candidate lists early on. He’s is very familiar with the Liberty’s ownership group, as he served on two different Brooklyn Nets coaching staffs under Kenny Atkinson from 2016-2018, and then under Jacque Vaughn and Kevin Ollie during the 2023-2024 season. In 2018, Weaver was tapped to lead the Nets’ G League team, the Long Island Nets, where he gained his first major experience as a head coach. After completing one season as head coach, Weaver was honored as G League Coach of the Year and led his team to the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Shortly after that season, Weaver took a job as the head coach of the National Basketball League (NBL)’s Sydney Kings in Australia. He was lauded for how he brought an NBA style defense that included a mix of switching and drop coverage to the Kings, and relied upon offense coming from getting out in transition. Weaver’s Kings led the NBL in three-point attempts and free throw attempts.
What remains intriguing about Weaver is whether or not he understands how difficult of a task it will be to coach the Liberty. Is Weaver up for the task of head-coaching in New York, where there needs to be a balance between aiming to win now while also developing talent, both young and old? At times throughout Brondello’s tenure, there was frustration with how younger players with potential were being buried by star veterans who were maybe past their prime but, to a certain extent, represented both the franchise and the vibrant city.
Weaver would like folks to know that he does understand this tension. He spoke about it on The Benas Podcast back in June of 2022. He explained how, when he was interviewing to become the head coach of the Kings, those two sometimes conflicting principles — honoring veterans and developing talent — were what ownership wanted.
On the show, Weaver addressed this tension, and explained to Benas the kinds of questions he would ask a new franchise to make sure they are on the same page about both winning now and developing new talent. “What are the things that you’re going to be looking for?” Weaver hypothetically proposed. “What are the things that you’re going to, if we accomplish them, you’re going to say — this is a smashing success?”
Weaver noted on the show that the Kings ownership gave him a list of priorities, consisting of: filling a talent pipeline for players and staff, being the most prepared team in the league, and ensuring the fans knew how much the team wanted to win for them. Those priorities all sound pretty close, if not exactly what Kolb, Wu Tsai and Liberty CEO Keia Clarke want for the franchise.
Questions that remain about Weaver include his knowledge of the WNBA and his understanding of how to lead women, something he has never done before. Weaver, unlike other WNBA coaches like the Mercury’s Nate Tibbetts, doesn’t appear to have a clear connection to women’s basketball. Tibbetts’ father coached girls high school basketball, and while Tibbetts’ brand as a “girl dad” has been a running joke, it does paint a genuine picture of his connection to girls’ and women’s empowerment through sports, a bedrock component of the WNBA.
Weaver as a candidate comes with other concerns that are not insurmountable but still significant. He has held a plethora of professional roles in the United States and abroad, but he has struggled to maintain continuity in most of them. He was also criticized during his time with the Kings for his lack of adaptability during a playoff series and his substitution patterns. The latter is something that Brondello wasn’t always sharp at, as well, and may be high on the franchise leadership’s priority list for its new coach.
Ultimately, it’s hard to deny that Weaver is accomplished, intelligent, well spoken and well educated — he received a masters in education from Sam Houston State University after getting his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas in philosophy and kinesiology. But the ways in which he connects with his players and his ability to manage personalities — a key skill for any coach looking to lead the Liberty —has been less documented compared to his analytical and modern basketball mind. Weaver’s resume speaks volumes about his accomplishments, but many questions still linger.
Toronto Raptors guard RJ Barrett (left) reviews with assistant coach Jama Mahlalela (center) during warm up before a game against the New York Knicks at Scotiabank Arena on Dec 9, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario, CAN;. Photo Credit: John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images
Jama Mahlalela— assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors
The Liberty’s front office watched the 2025 WNBA Finals closely and paid careful attention to how Becky Hammon coached masterfully during the final months of the 2025 campaign. The way Hammon not only implemented junk defenses to begin each Finals game but also how much ingenuity she used to get a team on the verge of missing the playoffs to win it all was the stuff the Liberty wanted to study.
Hammon used her creativity and her emotional intelligence to get her team to the finish line. Jama Mahlalela — the least familiar name of the bunch — had a knack for doing just that when he was an assistant coach with the Golden State Warriors.
The New York Post‘s Madeline Kenney was the one to initially report that an “NBA Eastern Conference assistant coach” was one of the finalists to lead the Liberty, before reporter Jake Fischer later revealed it to be Mahlalela. Shayna Rubin, who, like Kenney, has been following Mahlalela’s career for some years, wrote a detailed feature for the Mercury News back in 2022 about why Mahlalela was a rising star. Rubin specifically talked about Mahlalela’s ability to balance chasing a championship and developing young role players — a balance that, as was mentioned, is something the Liberty are desperately looking for.
Rubin explained that Mahlalela’s analytical background meshed incredibly well with his aptitude as a communicator. She also reported that Mahlalela’s strength lies in turning droves of data and analytics into much more digestible guides to help players develop.
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“He’s very forward-thinking,” Kirk Lacob, the Warriors’ executive vice president of basketball operations, told Rubin about Mahlalela. “He’s not reactive, he’s proactive about things. I don’t want to say we’ve never had somebody like that, but he’s a different breed from any coach we’ve had.”
Before embarking on an NBA coaching career, Mahlalela worked for the Toronto Raptors as a community projects supervisor. Throughout his journey in professional basketball, Mahlalela has dedicated a lot of time to philanthropy, something that CEO Clarke would see as aligned with the Liberty organization. Mahlalela, who is half-Canadian and half-Swazi, has been involved in multiple charitable organizations that aim to develop basketball in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland).
His global awareness and charitable spirit further make him a fit for the franchise; recall that Brondello’s mayoral tendencies, in addition to her ability to relate to players, were heavily valued during her four years in New York. Brondello was one of the faces of the franchise and she represented it well; so far, it seems that Mahlalela might have the personality to do the same.
Still, Mahlalela comes with limitations. Although he’s been a head coach before, most significantly for the Raptors’ G League team Raptors 905, he hasn’t been in the head coaching seat when the stakes are very high. He has a deep emotional intelligence, a global mindset, and an empathetic personality, but these abilities have not quite been put to the test when adversity strikes.
Kristi Toliver — associate head coach for the Phoenix Mercury
Phoenix Mercury associate head coach Kristi Toliver greets former teammate Myisha Hines-Allen at CareFirst Arena in Washington D.C. on July 16, 2024. Photo Credit: Domenic Allegra |The Next
And last but certainly not least: Toliver. She is the only candidate on this list that has extensive experience leading women, and that means as both a player and a coach. She’s a 2X WNBA champion winning titles on both the 2016 Sparks and the 2019 Mystics. On both rosters she played with and gained the respect of players with a vast array of personalities including Candace Parker, Chelsea Gray, Nneka Ogwumike and Elena Delle Donne.
Those qualifications ought not be overlooked, especially when both Weaver and Mahlalela haven’t worked with professional women’s basketball players before.
What makes Toliver a well-rounded candidate is the fact that she has both the NBA experience that New York clearly desires, and also the authentic connection to not only the WNBA’s past but to its present, as well.
She has four years as an assistant at the NBA level, coaching during some of her final WNBA off-seasons for both the Washington Wizards and then the Dallas Mavericks. And after she tore her ACL during her last professional season for the Mystics in 2023, she then got the call from the Mercury to help Tibbetts adjust to the WNBA as his associate head coach.
“It was like four years of college for me,” Toliver Told The IX Basketball about her NBA experiences. “I was just like a student, and I soaked it up and I gave my flair to it because of my experience in the W. I brought that to the NBA. It can go both ways.”
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Toliver explained to The IX Basketball back at the 2025 WNBA finals exactly what she brought to the NBA. One of her most impactful contributions came when she regularly helped Luka Dončić with some of his emotional regulation skills, especially when it came to his frustrations with the officiating. These experiences demonstrated her emotional intelligence, which is a trait the Liberty prioritize.
Hiring Toliver would also be a symbol that the Liberty continue to value elevating women, and especially former players. Bringing her on would be another example since Becky Hammon’s reintroduction to the WNBA of how the NBA has worked in concert with the WNBA to make the W better.
Toliver may seem like an obvious choice to some, but one large question looms: she is not so far away from her playing career — how would that bode for her in a role that demands and expects immediate results?
Also, out of the three, Toliver is the only coach without at least one season of head coaching experience. Though, to be clear, there have been a slew of former NBA players who had no head coaching experience and then were hired into those roles anyway. (See Steve Nash, J.J. Redick, Jason Kidd and many others).
The double standard is an important detail, but even without it, Toliver coaching her former teammates could be a potential limitation to consider. Just think about the dynamics that emerged when Katie Smith went from playing to associate head coaching and then head coaching in just a few years (hint: they weren’t great).
Those emerging dynamics are important to consider. But Toliver, whose career came to a close not even three years ago, is a New York Liberty head coach finalist who remains steadfast.
“I’m ready for it,” she said. “I’m built for it. I’ve been thinking about that for the last five years, since I got into coaching. I think I have enough experience as a player and coach to lead women. I think women want to be led by someone that’s gone through that, who has been in their seat.”
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