No Offseason Newsletter 🏀 | This is The Athletic’s women’s basketball newsletter. Sign up here to receive No Offseason directly in your inbox.Welcome back to No Offseason. The Knicks are champions; will the Liberty follow suit (after having already done it first, technically)?
Let’s get to it.Concrete Jungle: It’s a New York thingThe New York Knicks championship title meant a lot to all of New York City, including the New York Liberty.The 10-4 Liberty can mirror what the Knicks accomplished this season, starting with being crowned the champions of the WNBA’s in-season tournament. In December, the Knicks beat the Spurs in the NBA Cup, which ultimately served as a premonition of what was to come in the NBA Finals.To reach the Commissioner’s Cup final on June 30, the Liberty beat the Washington Mystics in an 86-64 Sunday matinee game. Their opponent is still TBD, but the vibes after the win were elevated.The vibes throughout all of New York City were … are … elevated.Jonquel Jones walked into Sunday’s postgame news conference after dropping 20 points and coming away with three steals and two blocks with a little reminder for everyone: The Liberty “did it first.”Jones hadn’t even reached the podium yet, but in stride with Breanna Stewart and coach Chris DeMarco, she wittily referred to the Liberty’s 2024 WNBA title, which ended New York City’s half a century professional basketball championship drought.All the Liberty players and coaches took in the NBA Game 5 clincher from various locations throughout the city. Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu watched from home, while Jones and DeMarco opted for restaurants in Soho and Park Slope, respectively.Like Stewart, finals MVP Jalen Brunson was brought to New York to lead a franchise to a title. Stewart applauded the way Brunson closed the series out by doing whatever was necessary — including leaving over $100 million on the table to stay with the Knicks and give them the flexibility to fill out this championship roster.“Very similar sentiments to when JJ and I came to New York,” Stewart said. “We wanted to, in our case, be the first ones to bring a championship to the Liberty. People want to do it. They take pride in doing something that hasn’t been done in a long time or hasn’t been done at all. I’m really happy for him and the rest of the (team.)”You know … I’m wondering if anyone has asked Knicks owner James Dolan lately if he regrets selling the Liberty in 2019.
