{"id":607923,"date":"2026-04-26T18:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T18:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/607923\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T18:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T18:58:09","slug":"liberty-gm-lauds-natasha-cloud-as-her-wnba-free-agency-lingers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/607923\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty GM lauds Natasha Cloud as her WNBA free agency lingers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb on Sunday publicly backed free agent Natasha Cloud, who remains unsigned a week into WNBA training camps.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters at his annual preseason press conference, Kolb lauded Cloud for being \u201ca phenomenal teammate\u201d and an \u201cawesome human being.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a phenomenal basketball player,\u201d Kolb said. \u201cShe belongs in the WNBA.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Liberty traded two first-round picks for Cloud last March just weeks after the Mercury dealt the veteran guard to the Sun as part of a four-team trade that brought Satou Sabally to Phoenix.<\/p>\n

Cloud\u2019s arrival to New York came on the heels of Courtney Vandersloot leaving in free agency and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton suffering an injury at Unrivaled. Laney-Hamilton ultimately had season-ending knee surgery in March 2025.<\/p>\n

Cloud, a 10-year veteran and 2019 WNBA champion, helped the Liberty to a franchise-best 9-0 start. She averaged 10.1 points, 5.1 assists and 3.7 rebounds in 41 games, tied for the second most on the team last season.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer Liberty Guard Natasha Cloud. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post<\/p>\n

Throughout last summer, Cloud expressed her love for New York, calling it home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very happy as a New York Liberty,\u201d the 34-year-old said July 18. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, the backcourt pairing of Sabrina Ionescu and Cloud wasn\u2019t as seamless as the Liberty had hoped. After New York\u2019s first-round exit, Kolb said the team would reevaluate Ionescu\u2019s role and her ideal backcourt partner.<\/p>\n

The Liberty had versions of their 2026 roster that included Cloud, who spent part of her offseason in New York and has\u00a0been a prominent supporter of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. To re-sign in New York, though, likely would\u2019ve required Cloud to take a pay cut (in terms of taking less cap space than 2025) and come off the bench.<\/p>\n

Once free agency started, the Liberty secured a major pickup, signing Sabally to a two-year deal <\/a>that all but shut the door on Cloud\u2019s return to Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCovering the Liberty like never before\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Madeline Kenney’s Inside the Liberty, a weekly Sports+ newsletter.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to make that clear: what really happened here, for us, really wasn\u2019t about fit,\u201d Kolb said. \u201cIt\u2019s about our targets in free agency and the condensed nature of free agency, how quickly things really move, but also it probably felt like they took a while, too, because when you\u2019re in the dark on things and we\u2019re pursuing other opportunities, it probably doesn\u2019t feel good.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for me, I just want to get that out there. Tash is amazing. Look at what she did, she\u2019s a New York legend in one year here because of who she is off the floor, but also on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kolb went out of his way to \u201cdispel\u201d speculation that Cloud wasn\u2019t a good teammate in New York or that she wasn\u2019t re-signed by the Liberty because of her pro-Palestine and anti-ICE activism.<\/p>\n

\"LibertyLiberty GM Jonathan Kolb. JASON SZENES\/ NY POST<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the best parts of my job is being able to have relationships with these players, build those relationships, curate those relationships,\u201d Kolb said. \u201cOne of the ones that I\u2019m most proud of is mine with Natasha. What she stands for is what I stand for. I believe in speaking up for the voiceless. There is no better embodiment of that than Natasha Cloud, and she puts her life on the line every single day with saying what she believes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb on Sunday publicly backed free agent Natasha Cloud, who remains unsigned a week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[436,99,434,23316],"class_list":["post-607923","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\/607923","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=607923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}