NEW YORK — In the month of June, the New York Liberty have earned currency. Not just for the African American Policy Forum, the organization that the team’s Commissioner’s Cup money is being donated to, but the team has begun to execute what the coaching staff had envisioned when this roster was finalized in early April.
The currency the Liberty earned allowed them the means to provide some meaningful gifts to team mascot Ellie the Elephant who celebrated her birthday on Sunday afternoon. Franchise guard Sabrina Ionescu returned to the floor after missing seven games with a back injury that she sustained following the Liberty’s May 24 game against the Dallas Wings. Ionescu had just played in one game this season prior to Sunday as she turned her ankle during the Liberty’s second preseason game against the Connecticut Sun.
Ionescu counts as gift one. Gift two was the very fact that New York defeated the Washington Mystics convincingly 86-64 to clinch a spot in the Commissioner’s Cup Championship game that will be played on June 30. This is the third Championship game the Liberty will partake in since the Cup was established in 2021.
“I just think it’s expected,” Satou Sabally said when asked whether clinching a spot in the Commissioner’s Cup championship reflects this team’s potential come fall.
Throughout the month of June, New York has gone 5-0 with a net rating of 17.1 (second in the league to the Minnesota Lynx), the top defensive rating (96.5) and the fourth best offensive rating (113.6).
How did this group get there? Last month this team was fighting off questions about a why the team had lack of urgency, and now in mid-June the Liberty have found a new sense of rhythm mainly without Ionescu.
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Head coach Chris DeMarco has attributed the Liberty’s ability to stay afloat offensively without Ionescu due to the combination of Breanna Stewart‘s play at point forward in conjunction with what DeMarco referred to as “consistency” from his French guards mainly in Marine Johannès and Pauline Astier.
Stewart has received two eastern conference player of the week designations already, and is averaging a hair under 20 points a game, 9 rebounds and 2.6 assists. Johannès and Astier have each averaged over 11 points per game and over three assists per game this season with Ionescu only playing in two of those games.
“Consistency is the one thing,” DeMarco said during a practice on Saturday. “I can’t think of many games where our guard play wasn’t consistent…but just the pace and the energy and defensively the effort our guards are playing with. “And it’s a challenge. We don’t have a ton of traditional point guards with [Ionescu], and [Marine] Fauthoux, just got back. That’s not an easy thing to try to get us organized, go against pressure, run an offense. So they’re doing a phenomenal job of just creating for themselves and each other, and really more than anything defensively, I’ve been really proud of just the game plan execution effort that they’re giving.”
Speaking of the Liberty’s defense, their defensive rating has fallen from 103.6 in the month of May to 96.5 in the month of June, improving almost 7 percentage points month over month.
Jonquel Jones, whose effort defensively had been questioned earlier in the season, explained what’s so different about the Liberty’s defense this season and how it took the team some time to adjust to what DeMarco and his staff were looking for.
She explained that the new defensive principles don’t always include a lot of “post player activity” on ball screens. The WNBA is a league where typically aggressive defense is played with hedging and trapping, but without those tactics the Liberty needed to figure out how they could defend aggressively without lunging out at the level of the screen.
2026 WNBA Injury Tracker
“For us it was like trying to find that happy medium of like understanding that we are going to play a little bit softer on ball screens, but finding other ways to also be aggressive and still be able to dictate who we’re playing against,” Jones said.
What does Jones mean by a soft ball screen? She’s referring to the fact that she’s not going to be hedging or trapping but rather will be in drop coverage defending the drive rather than interrupting the ball handler at the level of the screen.
Leonie Fiebich, one of the Liberty’s most versatile defenders, added that the team’s focus when it comes to rebounding out of a zone defense has improved, making sure that the opponent gets one shot rather than two or three.
When Fiebich was asked how this team has been able to survive and thrive without Ionescu playing, she pointed toward the French rookie Astier who as of now is a shoo-in for a spot on the All-WNBA rookie team.
“Offensively we’re just really aggressive,” she said. “I mean Pauline has done an amazing job of getting downhill, creating shots, being confident. It’s not easy to step in that role, and everybody gave a little bit more.”
This was something the Liberty struggled a ton with last season: giving a little bit more when a star was out. New York really floundered in 2025 when both Jones, Stewart and Ionescu had extended absences.
Last September Fiebich told reporters after the team’s loss to the Mercury in the first round of the playoffs that one of the lessons she learned was how to “to play when your biggest contributors are down” and how vital role players are in helping a team get to where it wants to go.
This is what has happened while Ionescu has been out: role have players stepped up. This is something that Ionescu also noticed while out on the floor with her team for the first time in three weeks on Sunday.
“I think this year our bench has been exceptional, and what they’ve been able to do game after game,” she said. They come in really confident and aggressive and that’s something that we haven’t always had in the past, so it’s been really exciting to see how all of them have helped get us to this point as well.”
While Ionescu’s point is well taken, it’s worth remembering how her observation comes as a reflection of the embarrassment of riches the Liberty have on their 2026 roster, and how Liberty General Manager Jonathan Kolb was extremely intentional about there being ways for the team to withstand almost any type of injury. How many WNBA teams can bring players like Satou Sabally and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton off their benches? Not many.
What Ionescu’s return means for the Liberty going forward
Speaking of Ionescu, Sunday afternoon’s game was the first time she had come off the bench since 2021, her first full WNBA season.
Fans were surprised when she wasn’t announced with the starters for her first game back. It was as unexpected as watching a choreographed routine that Ellie the Elephant and her two WNBA mascot party guests Violet the Raven and Skye the Lioness performed to the Destiny’s Child hit “Lose My Breath.”
Maybe Ionescu coming off the bench was more of a surprise than the mascot performance, but what remained the same was the volume of the cheers that erupted from the Barclays Center both when Ionescu checked in for her first minutes in weeks and when the Ellie the Elephant, Violet the Raven and Skye the Lioness strutted down the court to the iconic opening snare drums of Destiny’s Child’s “Lose My Breath.”
Ionescu missed the energy of the crowd in Brooklyn and it wasn’t easy for her to sit and watch either from the bench or at home while the team played their two previous Commissioner’s Cup games on the road.
Her return on Sunday looked different from how her first game of the season played out on May 24 against the Wings. She didn’t score as many points or even hit even a three pointer. Her first points came off a backdoor cut on a pass from Jones with 4:55 left in the third quarter.
Ionescu didn’t force it like she did last month and instead just played within the flow of the offense. She trusted her teammates around her. “I didn’t predetermine anything,” Ionescu told reporters about what her goals were for her first game back. “I wanted to just read the game and felt like I did that, but also get my teammates going and get them easier looks.”
Her number one goal was simply to be able to feel the joy that she does when she’s out on the floor with her teammates. If that meant celebrating each and every one of the Liberty’s ten blocked shots or emphatically pointing to Sabally when she hit a three-pointer off one of her passes, that’s what Ionescu wanted to feel again.
“It’s something that it kind of reminds you when you get back out there, how amazing it is to play here,” Ionescu said about Barclays Center.
DeMarco called her 26 minutes in her return “phenomenal.” He also noticed how sharp her decision making was in the flow of the Liberty’s offense. She didn’t try to do much but instead did what she needed to do to make sure her team would walk away with the win.
And win the Liberty did. The last time New York played the Mystics they barely got by, winning 98-93 in overtime. But this time the Liberty won in the way they are expected to against the youngest roster in the league.
“I feel like the first time we played the Mystics we didn’t have a lot of people,” Stewart said postgame. No [Sabally], no [Ionescu], no [Fiebich], right? So I think that now we’re just feeling like a little bit more complete. As far as having our full roster today for I think the first game, and knowing that now we’re starting to build. Beginning of the season we were trying to kind of work through some things and just to get the wins while we could, and now we’re like this is our day one.”
Stewart previously referred to the month of June as their month to build, while also saying that May represented their work in progress month or that prep before the construction actually begins.
The Liberty had to give a little to get a little. They earned multiple types of currency for themselves, their community and Ellie in the process.
