Sandy Brondello Shares Last Word Before Liberty Playoffs
For New York Liberty head coach, it's nothing personal ... just business.
The tenured WNBA boss is set to embark on her latest playoff run, set to guide the Liberty in the knockout stage of the franchise's first postseason championship defense. It gets underway in a familiar locale, as Brondello returns to the desert to face the Phoenix Mercury in a best-of-three set starting on Sunday (5 p.m. ET, ESPN).
"This is a part of the coaching journey, isn't it? You're never going to stay in one spot, and unless you're Cheryl Reeve. She's been there for quite some time," Brondello said with a smirk in Sunday's lead-up, referring to the 16-year leader of the Minnesota Lynx. "You just make most of the opportunities, but I have only fun memories. I love this arena, but I'm on the other side now, so we just have to come in and really focus on playing our best basketball."
The playoffs are a welcome third act to this rollercoaster Liberty season, one that looks quite different from their last postseason visit: New York was a top two seed in each of the last two tournaments but injuries and inconsistency relegated them to a fifth-place finish on the 2025 leaderboard. That'll force them to open the playoffs on the road for the first time in three years, placed in a fifth seed that hasn't won a single game since the WNBA postseason eliminated byes in that aforementioned 2022 tour.
"Obviously we're the fifth seed," Brondello said. "We're starting off on someone else's home court, but we just have to lean in and do what we've done and build on what we built up over these last few games ... We've had a really good preparation leading into this game, it's about going back and remembering, what is our identity, how we want to play? How do we want to make them feel uncomfortable? It's two really good teams going against each other. Obviously, whoever scores more points than the other one's going to be the winner at the end of the day."
Phoenix has been that victor on three of the four regular season meetings staged this season, though injuries have defined the quartet. The Liberty had their "big three," consisting of downright historic talents Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, and Breanna Stewart, fully available in only one of those showdowns. By what could hardly be called coincidence, it was the one game that the Liberty won, earning an 89-76 decision in late July at Barclays Center.
Despite the lack of "extra motivation" residing on the hosts' sideline, Brondello ironically enough has the perfect fairy tale to tell her team in the form of the 2021 Mercury: that team, seeded fifth, had a losing record at the Olympic break before defeating the Liberty in the opening round and subsequently earning upset triumphs over Seattle and Las Vegas in the latter portions. That group fell to future New York champ Courtney Vandersloot and the Chicago Sky but Brondello's groups know how to win in the face adversity.
"2021, we were the fifth seed ... We went all the way to the Finals. It's about playing your best basketball at the right time of the year," she said. "Everyone knows about our injuries. We we only had our full group together for two games ... So a lot of disruptions here, but it doesn't matter, this is playoffs. It doesn't matter what the standings are. It's 0-0, it's a whole new season. We know what we're capable of, and now it's just coming out and doing it."
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.