New York Liberty once again at WNBA ‘epicenter’ with championship quest

In Super Squads, The Athletic follows the New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces in their quests to win a WNBA championship. Our reporters will tell the stories of the players on two of the most star-studded teams in league history and examine how their paths shape the future of the WNBA.

As the 2023 WNBA regular season wound down and the New York Liberty prepared for the playoffs with championship hopes, several former players started a group text. When the current iteration of the franchise takes the floor for games, the former Liberty stars message each other about the on-court happenings they observe. They muse about physical screens, and evaluate the Liberty’s offensive and defensive execution. They wear Liberty gear and share selfies.

“For the first time in my life since I’ve retired, I’m just a basketball fan,” says Sue Wicks, a Liberty forward from 1997-2002 who is one of seven players in the franchise’s Ring of Honor. “To feel fanhood, is a great sensation for me.”

No longer does Wicks worry about the security of the WNBA or the stability of her former organization, which is one of only two remaining franchises from 1997 in its original city. Now, she can just enjoy New York’s success.

Like Wicks, many in the group text of more than a dozen members were part of the last Liberty team to compete in a WNBA Finals. That came in 2002, when New York lost in three games to the Los Angeles Sparks. It’s been 21 years, but on Sunday afternoon, the franchise will return to the championship series, where it will take on the Las Vegas Aces. Around the 3 p.m. ET tipoff, the chat will come to life again. “It’s fun that we are so wired about it,” says Teresa Weatherspoon, a former star Liberty guard who is in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

Much has changed within the Liberty organization since Weatherspoon guided New York to the ’02 Finals. The team was previously owned by the Madison Square Garden Company, which said it had lost more than $100 million while operating the Liberty for nearly two decades. The Liberty played games at Madison Square Garden and then briefly in Westchester County Center, where attendance plummeted. Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai bought the franchise in January 2019, and though financial details aren’t public, they have become team owners known for investing heavily in the franchise and treating players like world-class athletes. The Liberty now play in Barclays Center, which they share with the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, and draw some of the biggest crowds in the league.

Liberty legends still feel connected with the present, however. “Those girls stand on what we built,” says Crystal Robinson, a former forward also in the Ring of Honor.

Weatherspoon still feels immense pride in her past affiliation as well. She says the Liberty teams she guided weren’t the most talented, but “they played together, played smart and played simple. … It was about the grind, the fight.” She sees a similar resilience in this year’s group, although it does feature plenty of star power with 2023 league MVP Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot, among others.

Weatherspoon, a member of the WNBA’s 15th and 20th anniversary teams, is proud that the Liberty players from the 1990s and early 2000s rallied support from the city as the league worked to gain a foothold with fans. Two decades ago, New York routinely averaged 15,000 fans. Celebrities like Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, Joan Jett and Gregory Hines, who former guard Vickie Johnson says “was our Spike Lee,” sat courtside. Richie Adubato, the Liberty’s head coach from 1999 to 2004, writes in an email that it was like “the WNBA version of the Lakers.”

After games, players didn’t only greet famous fans. They routinely stood outside Madison Square Garden for up to two hours and signed autographs — ”every autograph,” Weatherspoon says — to make sure fans felt welcomed. “Whatever we had to do in the community, we wanted them to feel connected to what we were doing. We wanted them to feel connected to us,” she adds.

Those similar bonds with fans are something Wicks has observed today. “The epicenter seems to be at a Liberty game,” she says. “This is the thing we all wished to happen, and here it is.”

With its marketable stars and on-court success, New York has seen over 100 percent growth in overall ticket sales this year, with a plus-200 percent lift in season-ticket memberships entering the season, the team said. Average home attendance was up more than 2,500 people per game since last season, and through early last month, their national television ratings were up 58 percent year-over-year, according to Nielsen Market Ratings. “People have been waiting for this moment to get behind the Liberty again,” Stewart told The Athletic last month.

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Though the franchise evolved, New York continues to acknowledge its past. During the last weekend of the regular season, more than a dozen former Liberty players gathered in Brooklyn for an alumni weekend. They watched a game together and went out to dinner. They greeted fans, some of whom, Robinson says, they remembered from their playing days at MSG. “That’s why our organization is so freaking successful,” Weatherspoon says. “They don’t forget the foundational pieces that worked their butts off to make this continue to happen.”

During this year’s finals, though, another reminder of the past will be on the opposing sideline. One of their own, Aces coach Becky Hammon, will try to stop the franchise she once starred for from winning its first-ever championship. In 1999, Hammon, who had gone undrafted after a stellar college career at Colorado State, was one of 20 invitees at the Liberty’s training camp. Adubato says Hammon had to come in and “prove herself very quickly.” “It was a longshot for her to make the team,” he says. Yet Hammon made a strong impression.

In preseason practices, which sometimes spanned four hours, Johnson says players went right at Hammon. “What we wanted to do, and what I wanted to do, was to make sure we had people on our team who would go through the fight with us, and wouldn’t run, wouldn’t back down in a fight,” Johnson says. Hammon never did.

Robinson, who roomed with Hammon throughout their New York tenure, recalls an instance of getting on the team bus, and comparing her bruises with Hammon’s “because Spoon was killing us every day.” Johnson says early in camp that year, general manager Carol Blazejowski asked Johnson to assess training camp participants. “I don’t know her name, but the little white short one, that kid, she has it. I would love for her to be on my team because I’ve hit her at least 15 times, and every time I hit her, she gets back up,” Johnson says she replied.

Video: Liberty Induct Becky Hammon Into Ring Of Honor | http://t.co/EeqNlL3J3Z pic.twitter.com/YeECT9sOju

— Hot Dog Man (@JoshuaZavadil) August 2, 2015

With Hammon now on the Aces’ sideline, the former Liberty players feel a bit more torn on who to root for than they might if New York was facing a different finals opponent. “Whether Becky wins it or whether the Liberty wins it, the Liberty win,” Robinson says. “You can see what kinds of products come out of the Liberty.” Johnson says, “New York has my heart,” but because of her friendship with Hammon, she wants the series to go five games. “And then at the last second,” she says, “whoever wins, wins.”

If the series plays out that way, it wouldn’t be the first time a Liberty finals appearance featured last-second dramatics. In 1999, Weatherspoon hit what is still one of the most iconic shots in WNBA history, nailing a halfcourt buzzer-beater in Game 2 of the series with the now-defunct Houston Comets. New York would lose Game 3, however, dropping their second of four finals appearances in a six-year span. “I still feel that pain,” Weatherspoon says.

Weatherspoon says she still “carries that load on my shoulders of being salty” for not winning a title. But, she says, “To know the team that we’re watching right now has an incredible chance to win it all, hell, I got to be there.”

Like numerous other Liberty alumni, she plans to attend games when the series flips back to Brooklyn. This weekend, however, she’ll soak in the action while hearing the commentary from members of her past through her buzzing phone notifications and on television, where another former original Liberty star, Rebecca Lobo, will provide commentary on the ESPN broadcast.

“It means everything to each one of us, because we, at our hearts, are still connected to being a part of the New York Liberty,” Weatherspoon says. “We feel like we are New York Liberty.”

The Super Squads series is part of a partnership with Google Lens. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Illustration: Samuel Richardson / The Athletic; Photo of Teresa Weatherspoon: Rocky Widner / WNBAE via Getty Images)