without Leonie Fiebich<\/a> for the last 14 games.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019re lucky enough here to have a large staff, and we\u2019ve always had people around Satou. But in other instances, like when I was in the NBA, we had players who are away from the team for months at a time, and it gets tough.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily, Satou is extremely smart. She\u2019s funny. She\u2019s got a lot of friends. People love being around her. She has other interests, so I think she\u2019s done a good job managing it, and she\u2019s got the right people around her. Like I said earlier, we\u2019re really looking forward to getting her back, and she will be back, and she\u2019s going to play at an elite level again. But in terms of just the broad scope of players who have to deal with injuries, like it\u2019s so hard. It\u2019s so hard, and sometimes I think fans, people who watch this game are like, \u2018Oh, you know, get over it. You\u2019re making money, or you\u2019re doing this, or it\u2019s only for this long.\u2019 It\u2019s just it\u2019s not that easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabally, the team\u2019s prized offseason acquisition, has played in just 13 of the Liberty\u2019s 35 regular-season games entering Friday. The three-time All-Star also missed time earlier this season due to a cyst and undisclosed illness.<\/p>\n
She joined the Liberty on a two-year deal after leading the Mercury in scoring (16.3) en route to a 2025 WNBA Finals appearance against the eventual champion Aces.<\/p>\n
Sabally is averaging 10.4 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 13 games (five starts) while trying to get in rhythm in her first Liberty season.<\/p>\n
Her absence \u2014 along with DNPs from multiple key Liberty starters \u2014 contributed to a contending team entering Thursday in a three-way tie for sixth place in league standings.<\/p>\n
The Liberty lineup of Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, Fiebich and Sabally have played just two games together this season.<\/p>\n
\u201c100 percent,\u201d Ionescu said when asked if the lack of continuity is hindering the team from reaching a level they believe can ultimately be reached.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no excuse, though. Every team goes through it, but I think for us particularly, not having our starting unit get reps in the regular season is hard. Other teams, maybe a player or two, it happens early, and then you come back and you\u2019re able to get a majority of the season to get together. And for us, that\u2019s just \u2014 it\u2019s not going to happen because it hasn\u2019t yet, and there\u2019s not that many games left. But hopefully, we\u2019ll be able to, you know, get everyone back at the right time, and you know, continue to build chemistry through the practices that we have in the rest of the games.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fiebich and Sabally\u2019s injury absences also puts their FIBA World Cup status in jeopardy with the tournament set to take place from Sept. 4-13 in Berlin \u2014 the home soil of the two players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Liberty will continue to be shorthanded for the foreseeable future. That\u2019s because Satou Sabally will be away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[10156,13970,16808,99,434],"class_list":["post-812857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-injury","tag-liberty","tag-satou-sabally","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812857","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=812857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}