Liberty fight through past disappointment, grueling, difficult series to claim the throne: 'It's a storybook ending'

NEW YORK — An out-of-place color increasingly broke out against the autumn palette here in the five boroughs. A seafoam hat on the streets. A branded T-shirt in the local park. A dog bandana. Blocks from Barclays Center, one side of a sports conversation about the New York teams competing for championships flew out toward passersby.

They’re going to win this tonight, he insisted. Sabrina Ionescu heard the same thing everywhere she went in the city the day before a winner-take-all Game 5. You’re gonna do this. You’re going to do it in New York.

And this New York Liberty team, sporting a scar and nearly three decades of disappointment, did it with a full city and buzzing arena behind it, defeating the Minnesota Lynx, 67-62, in overtime in Game 5 on Sunday night. It’s the city’s first basketball championship since the New York Nets won the ABA title in 1974.

“They’ve been dying for a championship here and to know that we were the first to do it in the WNBA here for the New York Liberty, like … I can’t put it into words,” Ionescu said in the early post-game celebration stages of winning her first WNBA title. “It’s exciting. Everyone’s crying, everyone’s celebrating. Confetti’s coming down. It’s just special because this has been our goal from the beginning.”

The Liberty had come close so many times, only to be met with heartbreak. They constantly heard they were the only original franchise still in its founding city without a championship. It wasn’t without trying. They reached four Finals in the league’s first six seasons, yet never won during the Houston Comets' dynasty era. They built a strong fanbase in the league’s largest city, regularly bringing in 14,000 fans to iconic Madison Square Garden in the buzzy early seasons of the league.

One of them was a budding young star from Central New York who made the five-hour trek with a teammate.

“I remember being a few rows back, just seeing these W players and just being in awe,” Breanna Stewart said. “It seems like, when you’re a kid, the lights are shining even brighter. It’s almost like you’re watching it on TV and hoping to be there one day.”

Stewart lifted her two young children at center court on Sunday in the middle of streamers and confetti, an after-game serenade she knows well. She already did this twice in Seattle, the organization that drafted her No. 1 in 2016 after winning four titles at UConn. There, she was the budding MVP with the guidance of a veteran point guard in Sue Bird.

In New York, she’s the face who felt the pressure of the city intimately. It grew when she missed a game-winning attempt in the 2023 Finals that would have forced Game 5.

“This is more personal,” Stewart said, a bottle of Champagne in front of her and goggles atop her head. “Just because I’m from New York. I’m from Upstate. And I came here for a reason. And that’s to win a championship.”

In the years after Stewart attended her first WNBA game at Madison Square Garden and accumulated an entire home’s worth of accolades, the Liberty were still near the top of the league. They reached semifinals and stacked up stars.

Sue Wicks, Teresa Weatherspoon, Becky Hammon, Swin Cash, Tina Charles, Crystal Robinson.

None of them lifted a trophy for the city. Stewart began her career playing against the Liberty in “The World’s Most Famous Arena,” but by 2018, Knicks owner and then-Liberty owner James Dolan booted the team to the dingy, small Westchester County Center outside of the city. Stewart remembers having to walk up stairs to get to the visitors' locker room. It was more like a girls AAU game than a professional level product.

Dolan also put the team up for sale, and in 2019, Brooklyn Nets owners Joseph and Clara Wu Tsai purchased the team. They moved it to Brooklyn and invested, changing the logo for the first time to incorporate the Statue of Liberty torch and adding seafoam green.

“This is what can happen when you have an intention and you put resources and care and attention to it,” Wu Tsai said during the trophy ceremony.

The following year, the draft lottery balls threw the franchise a gift with the No. 1 overall pick. It gave them the rights to draft Ionescu, the NCAA triple-double queen they could build a championship-winning team around. She missed all but 10 quarters of her rookie year with an ankle injury that hampered her throughout her first seasons. She called them “dark days” on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic cutting short her senior year at Oregon.

General manager Jonathan Kolb dreamed big around her and wrote three names on his whiteboard ahead of the 2023 free agency period. He built the league’s first superteam by bringing Stewart home, signing star point guard Courtney Vandersloot to play alongside and guide Ionescu, and trading for former MVP Jonquel Jones.

“Jonathan did a really great job of getting these players to come to New York and sell the vision that we had here,” said Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello, in her third season at the helm. “We wanted to win. New York has never won before. Now we're going to go into history books as the first ever. I mean, that makes me very proud, because people think it's easy.”

Excitement grew as they accumulated wins. Attendance climbed. Barclays became a destination for Liberty game days while the roster led New York to its first Finals since 2002. They fell short against the Aces in those 2023 Finals at home. Las Vegas was without two starters and still the Liberty couldn’t take advantage. Brondello referred back to the loss all year in their renewed quest.

They quite nearly gained another scar in one of the most competitive Finals in league history they nearly squandered. The Liberty blew an 18-point lead in Game 1 to stun their faithful crowd and lost in overtime. They had a chance to close it in Game 4, but looked rushed and too urgent. Minnesota won it on free throws.

It was heartbreaking to not close out the series then, Vandersloot said.

“But I knew that this, this moment, was going to be special,” Vandersloot said in the hallway of Barclays as music blared in the club room to celebrate. “It's going to be special for everybody involved, and it was also going to be special with the fans, just having everybody kind of just pour into us.”

Stewart said as much after the Game 4 loss. New York ranked second in attendance behind the Indiana Fever and packed the house with a title on the line. They’ve gained celebrity fans again decades after the Joan Jett voodoo-doll days, which Brondello, a former player, remembers as the team created a buzz in a greater metro area with two NFL teams, two NHL teams and two MLB teams.

“There was a belief in the city behind us and to be able to do it at home, it’s a storybook ending,” Ionescu said. “There’s no other way to say it. And it wasn’t pretty. That’s kind of like the beauty of it. It wasn’t going to come out and be like this crazy win. It was going to be us sticking together. And that’s what we did tonight.”

They believed, sure. They also weren’t at their most boisterous throughout a clunky offensive game the Liberty had to find a way to win ugly. It began to look a lot like last year. They nearly let Game 5 slip away as Ionescu and Stewart struggled, and the series required yet another overtime. New York never shut the door, and it was much harder than it needed to be.

“Whether we win or lose, we want to put it all on the line,” Stewart said. “Because last year when we lost, there was more in the tank. And this year, that wasn’t happening.”

Fans lit up when New York took the third quarter lead and started “We all we got! We all we need!” chants to match the team’s pregame huddle chants this year. They yelled for Nyara Sabally, an unlikely X-factor who came up clutch in a big lineup Brondello had never used. Everyone stayed, phones out, for the postgame celebrations, screaming for Jones’ surprised face at hearing she was Finals MVP in her fourth appearance.

Jones was blunt last year during another slog of a New York Finals that she was tired of losing, having done it twice with the Connecticut Sun. Stewart and Jones, the team’s two league MVPs, embraced after the buzzer.

“It was picture perfect to be able to embrace JJ,” Stewart said. “Really what I was saying was she led us.”

When they spoke two years ago, it was about coming together to win a championship for a franchise that never had. For the people who couldn’t get the job done.

Cash and Weatherspoon shed tears courtside as the 2024 roster celebrated. Wicks has been courtside throughout the season. Actors Aubrey Plaza and Jason Sudeikis sported the seafoam with 18,000-plus in Barclays and plenty more watching on TV.

“The support that we've been shown from everyone, game in and game out, is why we were able to win this game,” Ionescu said.

Every player said the same thing. They were excited to do it for New York. And now they’re waiting on the parade.