Sandy Brondello's Players Speak on Liberty Record
On the night of the 100th, New York Liberty forward Leonie Fiebich was focused on a much smaller number: four.
Aug. 8 was a night of landmarks for Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello: with an 88-77 win — the 100th of her metropolitan career — over the Dallas Wings, she tied, and has since broken, the lead for Gotham women's basketball victories, a mark that Richie Adubato had held for 25 years.
Fiebich, however, was decidedly amused by the fourth technical foul Brondello had been charged with over her fourth Brooklyn season.
"I was really proud of her getting the tech today. I think that was needed," Fiebich said as an amused Brondello laughed. "She's got our backs and I've only played a couple of months for Sandy, but so far, so good. You can tell that she understands the process we go through as players. You can just build a relationship with her because she's a good person and you can always come talk to her. That just adds to the basketball stuff, the coaching stuff on the court. To have that combination is pretty rare."
Fiebich fielded such a question that night as Brondello has never been one to treasure her individual accomplishments. True to form, Brondello reminded Fiebich, whose breakout over the past year has been latest purple patch for the seafoam overseer, that her T didn't exactly help matters.
The hosting Wings, down 11 when the sentence was handed down eight seconds after the midway mark of the fourth quarter, went on a 12-4 run that went into the final minute before metropolitan sanity took over against with a pair of varied Marine Johannes three-pointers.
The resulting win matched Brondello with Adubato and she took over sole possession with a 105-97 triumph over the Los Angeles Sparks on Tuesday night. Brondello took to the postgame podium draped in a towel after her players — prompted by guard Natasha Cloud's signal of "Liberty Biberty!" — doused her with bottles of water after she granted each of them a congratulatory handshake.
Tasked with leading a championship defense — one staged in the concrete pressure cooker that is New York, no less — is at the forefront of Brondello's mind, leading her to frequently quip that "good players" is the secret behind reaching the victorious century mark. But if Brondello's not doing the talking, the players in question are happy to do it for her.
"She's obviously had a long career in this league for a reason," said Stephanie Talbot, who has worked with Brondello in Phoenix and the Australian national basketball club. "She a great, great people person. She instills confidence in her players, and it goes a long way."
"I've never been a coach, but I'd assume any time you're able to just continue to make history, it's a testament to how great of a coach you are,' Sabrina Ionescu said on the road to 101. "Obviously, it's the players that make the thing go, but in order to win, your players have to love you and what you do and kind of the way that you're able to lead and be a coach."
"Obviously we're going to celebrate her, and that's speaks well to who she is, because obviously this is one of the, like, original franchises. There have been many coaches that have kind of come through here and so I'm obviously very thankful to have been coached by her and still be coached by her."
To Brondello's long-standing point, the Liberty's roster has resembled an "NBA 2K" franchise roster with trade override turned off. Prior to Brondello's second year at the helm, the team acquired not just All-Stars but commonly accepted legends of the game in Jonquel Jones, Breanna Stewart, and the since-departed Courtney Vandersloot.
They joined a homegrown core of Ionescu and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, yields of the previous "hybrid rebuild" era overseen by general manager Jonathan Kolb before his fateful splurging. Brondello had come a year before, acting as a closer of sorts on the women's basketball scene.
Beyond her experience on the floor (ironically reaching the inaugural WNBA All-Star Game at Madison Square Gaden in 1999), Brondello was a perfect match considering her prior resume: throughout her coaching career, begun as a Dan Hughes protege with the San Antonio Silver Stars, she was tasked with harnessing superstar talents and their lofty expectations.
Her first title, for example, came when she guided the DeWanna Bonner-Candice Dupree-Brittney Griner-Diana Taurasi grouping to the 2014 championship, her first bit of North American hardware. Prior to last year's title run, Brondello got Talbot and the aforementioned Aussies back on the Olympic podium with a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics.
That's a phenomenal brand of hardwood power, but turning the keys to such a machine over could be disastrous, akin to granting an Ewok the pilot's chair on the Millennium Falcon. Proof of the right decision forever hovers over the Barclays Center hardwood in the form of the Liberty's first postseason championship banner earned last season.
"You could take a lot of good players together, but if they don't mesh well because of egos, selfishness, whatever, it's just not going to work, I don't care how good the group is," reserve forward Isabelle Harrison, whose WNBA career began under Brondello's watch in Phoenix, said.
"She has done a great job of just giving everybody their role in that starting five, and just pushing them to really good heights. It's just standards, standards of a culture, standards of leadership. I'm sure she saw that being in Phoenix with all those all stars and Olympians. For her to translate that coming into New York, she just built something really, really special here. I also just love that she's a female coach doing that as well. "It's really like boss energy for real and I really respect that about her."
"It means that she's at a level of sustained excellence since she's been here, and that we've had a really good squad as well," Jones said of the way Brondello has worked the elite lineup. "She's just a really good coach. I think she does a really good job of mixing being a really personable coach, but also knowing when to change gears and be really serious. She has the respect to be able to do both with us. It's a thing that takes a little bit of nuance and for her to be able to do that just shows the type of person that she is, the respect that that she has from all of us."
To that end, and perhaps more importantly, Brondello has tapped into the Liberty's human side beyond basketball, a theme she has merged brilliantly on both a personal and professional level. She continues to work alongside her husband and assistant coach Olaf Lange and the couple's children Brody and Jayda are frequent sideline staples when their own hardwood affairs are on hiatus.
That tends to leave an impression on players no matter how long they've stuck around, whether they've been years-long staples like Harrison or Talbot, a lasting, accomplished protege like the lingering big three, or someone in-between like Emma Meesseman, who has embraced all facets of the Brondello system.
"When you're away from home, you have to come in every single day, you want to have a relationship where you can trust your coach, really feel that she has your back, and you know that you can be human. You're not just a product on the court," said the Belgian-born Meesseman, who worked with Brondello in their shared overseas work. "That's what I love about Sandy, about this team over here."
"On the basketball side, obviously it's 100 wins, You don't get that for nothing. She's going to keep going, and she's going to build her legacy."
The woman from down under is now on top for the Liberty. To metropolitan delight, it has paid off in more ways than one.
Geoff Magliocchetti is a veteran sportswriter who contributes to a variety of sites on the "On SI" network. In addition to the Yankees/Mets, Geoff also covers the New York Knicks, New York Liberty, and New York Giants and has previously written about the New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, Staten Island Yankees, and NASCAR.