CHICAGO — Another title, or at least a third consecutive trip to the WNBA Finals, seemed to be a given as the New York Liberty opened the season with nine straight wins, most of them decisive.
And then the injuries piled up.
Jonquel Jones missed almost two weeks with a sprained ankle. And then another month when she aggravated the injury. Breanna Stewart missed a month with a bone bruise. Natasha Cloud missed a game after breaking her nose. Sabrina Ionescu just returned Tuesday after missing four games with a toe injury. Nyara Sabally has played only 17 games this season because of knee issues.
Put it all together, and this week was the first time since late May the defending champions have had their full squad available. The Liberty head into the playoffs with their starting lineup having played 12 full games together.
“I’ve been in this league for quite some time as a player and a coach, and I don’t think I’ve ever been in this situation with so many players in and out. Especially your key players,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said before Thursday night’s regular-season finale against the Chicago Sky.
“I’m confident in this team when we’re full,” Brondello added. “I think we’ve shown that when we’ve had a full team that we can beat anyone, but we still have to play really good basketball.”
If there’s a team built to weather a season like this, it’s the Liberty. Though they are the No. 5 seed in the playoffs and have to go on the road to start their best-of-three series against Phoenix, there’s no one in the WNBA that is going to take New York lightly.
Not if they’re smart, that is.
The Liberty returned four starters from the team that won the WNBA title last year, while adding Cloud to the starting lineup. That means all five of New York’s starters have won at least one WNBA title.
The depth beyond the starting five is scary-good, too. Sabally and Kennedy Burke were on New York’s team last year. Marine Johanes, who gets significant minutes off the bench, was part of the France team that won the silver medal at last year’s Paris Olympics.
And the Liberty got a late-season boost when they added Emma Meesseman last month after she led Belgium to the EuroBasket title. Meesseman, who played with Cloud on Washington’s 2019 title team, has scored in double figures in all but three of her 17 games with New York.
“We have a locker room that really understands what it takes to go long and to win a championship,” Jones said.
“Experience is, ultimately, the name of the game and having pros invested who have been here before,” she added. “I don’t know if I can necessarily put it into words, but more experienced teams tend to do really well.”
The Liberty lost in the WNBA Finals in 2023, to the Las Vegas Aces. Don’t discount that experience, either, Ionescu said.
“We know what it takes to win, we know what it takes to lose,” she said. “I think that just helps.”
With New York’s playoff seed locked and the Sky limping to the end of yet another dismal season, Brondello used Thursday night’s game as a chance to build chemistry. Give the starters quality minutes together and get everyone some time on the floor.
The starters all played 19 minutes or more, with Ionescu going the longest at 26 minutes. Brondello cleared her bench late in the third quarter, and every Liberty player got at least 10 minutes.
“I will say, where we are now with a healthy team, we’re going to be so much better in the postseason because of all that adversity that we hit in the middle of the season,” Cloud said. “I’m a big, firm believer in the adversity along the way shapes you for your purpose.”
Even if it didn’t, the Liberty didn’t have much choice in the matter. Injuries are a fact of life in sports, unfortunate as they may be, and teams don’t get to choose when they happen.
All you can do is weather the storm the best you can.
“I don’t think anything can really prepare you for the year that we had,’ Ionescu said. ‘You can kind of use it one or two ways: As an excuse to not come out and compete and just kind of let that be what the year is going to look like, or you can use it to help you moving forward and equip you to better handle the adversity that’s to come. That’s the way that we’re looking at it.
“It’s going to tell a great story, no matter how it turns out to be.”
Best of all, after a season filled with adversity, every single member of the Liberty will have a hand in writing it.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.