Liberty’s Big Offseason Decision Will Be Tested After Sabrina Ionescu Injury
The New York Liberty already encountered their first obstacle. Sabrina Ionescu injured her ankle in a preseason game and will have to miss at least two weeks.
Ionescu’s injury will immediately throw rookie head coach Chris DeMarco into the fire and reveal how ready he is to handle a team with championship expectations and a margin for error so small that it’s pretty much non-existent.
Hiring a first-time head coach (with absolutely no WNBA experience) to lead a veteran team trying to win it all was a bold move. The start of the season will immediately reveal how good a choice it was.
Chris DeMarco will have to answer some big questions to start the season
Ionescu’s injury poses two questions DeMarco will have to find an answer to quickly: How does he navigate rotations and ball-handling responsibilities with Ionescu out, and how can the team overcome the fact that its most important players haven’t even played together yet?
The Liberty opted to move on from Natasha Cloud this offseason and make Ionescu the primary ballhandler. They also don’t have a ton of depth behind her except for Marine Johannes, who is not a traditional point guard, and Pauline Astier, who is a rookie (assuming that she will make the final roster).
DeMarco has several options here. The simple solution would be to start Astier or Johannes and see if they are up to the challenge. He could also turn to Breanna Stewart as a point-forward and just throw a ton of size out on the court in the starting lineup.
Another issue is that the Liberty’s most important players haven’t even played together yet in preseason and will have to build chemistry well into the regular season. Satou Sabally didn’t play in any of the team’s preseason games, as she was returning to conditioning. Leonie Fiebich also didn’t play because she is still competing overseas.
The Liberty have the advantage that Ionescu, Stewart, Jones, Fiebich, Johannes, and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton know each other very well at this point. Sabally also has experience playing with Ionescu from their college days, shared a court with Fiebich as a member of the German national team, and teamed up with Stewart in Turkey for a season a few years ago. Still, adding an All-Star-level player like Sabally to an already established big three is a challenge, and not getting to play all four of them together before the start of the season only creates a longer learning curve.
The Aces proved last year that a slow start doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t win a championship, but if DeMarco cannot figure these two things out quickly, the Liberty could be in for a bumpy ride.
Add us as a preferred source on Google
Elaine Blum covers women’s basketball for On SI from Europe. She has been writing about women's hoops since 2023 and holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism and a master’s degree in American Studies with a focus on women’s and gender studies. She started playing basketball when she was 10 years old and won several league and state championships at the youth and senior level.