There was her desire to be on the East Coast, with a more manageable time difference to talk to family back home in Germany.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There was her love for New York, a city in which she\u2019s spent plenty of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/20260417_SatouSabally_CS011.jpg\")
New York Liberty Satou Sabally participates in a clinic with Uncommon Excellence Girls Middle School at a welcome event at the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center, Friday, April 17, 2026, in Brooklyn, NY. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST<\/p>\n
She wanted an organization with high standards that catered to player needs, something she didn\u2019t have at the start of her career in Dallas and which players fought for in CBA negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There was also \u201cunfinished business\u201d with Sabrina Ionescu after the duo couldn\u2019t bring a national title to Oregon, and there was a feeling that the Liberty were her best shot at winning a championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She got close last year with the Mercury, beating the Liberty along the way before Phoenix lost to the Aces in the finals. This year, it\u2019s about getting over the hump. Sabally will have a superteam around her, with Ionescu, Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones forming one of the league\u2019s best foursomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to win with [Ionescu]. It\u2019s been such a long time since Oregon but that is something we still talk about,\u201d Sabally said. \u201c\u2026 I love playing alongside Stewie, so that was a good decision for me playing-wise too. I\u2019ve never played with her but she\u2019s just such a force. Really having other people around me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cI know I can be a superstar and single myself out on a different team and get that $1.2 or $1.4 [million]. But what I really wanted to do is win a championship. I think that is missing on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI am an All-Star, I know who I am, I know I\u2019m a great player. But I do want that ring.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conventional wisdom is, there\u2019s a good chance she\u2019ll get it. The Liberty became title favorites after Sabally signed, and anything less would be viewed as a disappointment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coach Chris DeMarco, a first-year head coach, is contending with those expectations, along with the heavily condensed WNBA calendar, which sees the regular season tip off just a few weeks from now after a rapid-fire training camp and preseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/20260417_SatouSabally_CS017.jpg\")
New York Liberty Satou Sabally speaks with the media at a welcome event at the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center, Friday, April 17, 2026, in Brooklyn, NY. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST<\/p>\n
Integrating another superstar into a group that already knows how to win, though, is a pretty good problem to have.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have championship pedigree,\u201d DeMarco said. \u201cI think some of those challenges of getting over the hump are for teams that haven\u2019t had players that have felt it before. I\u2019m very much gonna lean into the championship pedigree.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
So will Sabally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I was just getting going in Game 3 [of the Finals],\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I had so much fun. During tipoff playing against A\u2019ja [Wilson], such a good player, was like, \u2018Oh, this is it. This is why I compete.\u2019 Just having that feeling and knowing you made it to the top \u2014 not quite the top but this is the final game, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it almost thrills me to not have that yet because it\u2019s still something to go for, still something to chase. I\u2019m so passionate about the game of basketball. I have a lot of time to think about everything and my values, my priorities in life and where I want to be in the future. I just truly feel like I wanted to come here, like I have been saying today, to fuse everything together in my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[Because] New York is just so big. I am big. It\u2019s the perfect match.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Satou Sabally was born in New York, and her mom always told her that both she and her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[436,99,434,23316],"class_list":["post-592857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-free-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}