stole a win from the Liberty last week<\/a> after executing better down the stretch.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Fire had fresh bodies, deploying a 10-player rotation that wore down their opponent. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Liberty had just nine active players in last Tuesday\u2019s defeat. <\/p>\n
Only seven players played 12 or more minutes, and four of the team\u2019s starters logged 30-plus minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Fire\u2019s bench outscored the Liberty\u2019s 32-11.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those days of overloading the starters, though, may soon be behind the Liberty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Satou Sabally is pictured before the Liberty\u2019s April 25 preseason game. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post<\/p>\n
New York expects to replenish its roster in the near future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sabrina Ionescu (left foot) and Satou Sabally (cyst) fully participated in Monday\u2019s practice. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the arrival of Leonie Fiebich and Raquel Carrera is imminent after they helped Valencia win the Spanish League championship Sunday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Liberty didn\u2019t have an official timeline for when Fiebich and Carrera will join the team. <\/p>\n
Coach Chris DeMarco said \u201cthey could use a few days off,\u201d but hoped to have them in the building by the end of the week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DeMarco said Ionescu and Sabally \u201clooked good\u201d in practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously both working on getting back to full speed,\u201d he said, \u201cbut yeah, really impressed with the progress they\u2019ve made.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is overall good news for the team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sabrina Ionescu is pictured after the Liberty\u2019s May 14 game. Imagn Images<\/p>\n
The influx of talent, though, is about to make DeMarco\u2019s job both easier and more complicated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On one hand, the Liberty are welcoming back All-Stars Ionescu and Sabally along with Fiebich, who was one of the Liberty\u2019s best perimeter defenders last season. <\/p>\n
They\u2019ll also have Carrera, whose addition will improve the frontcourt\u2019s depth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other hand, there are only so many minutes to be played. <\/p>\n
A playing time crunch feels imminent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good problem to have.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Leonie Fiebich attempts a shot during the Liberty\u2019s July 2025 game. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cMy door is always open, I want to have these one-on-one relationships with our players,\u201d DeMarco said when asked about navigating rotation changes with players returning. \u201c\u2026 The minutes thing, it\u2019ll work itself out. Everybody in this building is here to win. And everyone\u2019s gonna do what\u2019s best for the team to win and so we\u2019ll figure all that out when it happens but right now, our focus is on Golden State and the game plan and make sure we\u2019re ready for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some starters who could be immediately impacted are Pauline Astier and Marine Johann\u00e8s. <\/p>\n
The French backcourt duo has been electric to start the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Johann\u00e8s is beaming with confidence. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s averaging career highs of 15.8 points and five assists per game. <\/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
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Her 15 made 3s are the most in the league.<\/p>\n
Astier is second on the team in scoring, with 16.8 points per game on 62.5 percent shooting from the field and 45.5 percent from beyond the arc.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is also conceivable that Betnijah Laney-Hamilton could be moved to the bench in favor of Fiebich.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Astier said she doesn\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen regarding the starting lineup once the team is back at full strength.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asked about her mentality of starting a game versus coming off the bench, she said, \u201cWe just have to be ready every time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
DeMarco said the team will still rely heavily on Astier even with Ionescu back.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Pauline, her role isn\u2019t going to change,\u201d he said. \u201cI know Sab\u2019s coming back, but she\u2019s been really impactful and she\u2019s going to continue to get those opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liberty forward Rebecca Allen isn\u2019t surprised by the team\u2019s 3-1 start. Actually, Allen said she expected to win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[160972,436,3675,99,434],"class_list":["post-651930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-chris-demarco","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-sabrina-ionescu","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651930","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=651930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}