New York Liberty
New York Liberty, American professional basketball team based in Brooklyn, New York, that plays in the Eastern Conference of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). The team has appeared in the WNBA finals five times (1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, and 2023) and won the championship in 2024.
One of the original eight WNBA franchises, the Liberty was immediately competitive when league play began in 1997. With a roster that included former college and U.S. national team standouts Rebecca Lobo and Teresa Weatherspoon, the Liberty reached the finals that inaugural season but lost to the now-defunct Houston Comets. The Liberty met the Comets again in the 1999 finals. In the second game of that series Weatherspoon famously hit a last-second shot from beyond the half-court line to win the game, though the Comets ultimately clinched the championship with a victory in game three.
The following year the Liberty faced the Comets for a third time in the finals, losing in two games. Lobo, who was largely sidelined by a knee injury in 1999 and 2000, was traded to the Comets ahead of the 2002 season. The Liberty returned to the finals that year but came up short yet again, this time falling to the Los Angeles Sparks.
New York had its first losing season in franchise history in 2003, when the team went 16–18 and missed the playoffs. The Liberty qualified for the playoffs in four of the next five seasons, advancing to the Eastern Conference finals in 2004 and 2008. Head coach Pat Coyle was fired midway through the 2009 season after the team lost 11 of its first 17 games. She was replaced by Hall of Famer Anne Donovan, who guided the Liberty back to the Eastern Conference finals in 2010 behind the play of All-WNBA guard Cappie Pondexter.
Two former star players for the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons, Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer, later took leading roles in the Liberty organization. Laimbeer served as head coach from 2013 to 2017. Thomas was team president from 2015 to 2019, a hiring that was met with controversy since Thomas had been found liable in 2007 for sexually harassing a coworker while he was head coach of the New York Knicks.
During this period high-scoring veteran center Tina Charles, traded to New York in 2014, became the team’s marquee player. Charles was named first-team All-WNBA in 2015 after leading the Liberty to a league-best 23–11 record and a berth in the Eastern Conference finals, in which the team lost to the Indiana Fever. By 2019 Charles had become the Liberty’s all-time leading scorer. She was traded to the Washington Mystics ahead of the 2020 season. With the first overall pick in that year’s WNBA draft, the Liberty selected guard Sabrina Ionescu of the University of Oregon. An ankle injury forced Ionescu to miss most of her rookie year, however, and New York struggled to a 2–20 record during a season shortened because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Liberty posted losing records in each of the next two seasons, but the team catapulted to the upper echelon of the WNBA in 2023 when New York signed star forward Breanna Stewart in free agency. That year the team finished the regular season with a record of 32–8 and easily advanced to the finals. There the Liberty lost to the Las Vegas Aces, 3–1. In a repeat of the previous season, New York won 32 out of 40 games in 2024 and returned to the finals. This time, however, the team was victorious, defeating the Minnesota Lynx in overtime of the deciding game five.