Happy Basketball Wednesday, presented by The BIG EAST Conference. The New York Liberty introduced their new head coach, Chris DeMarco on Wednesday, and there is little question he knows what the assignment is.
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Basketball Wednesday
Our Jackie Powell asked him to define success in 2026 with the Liberty, and his answer offered no hedging at all.
In 2026, we obviously have championship aspirations,” DeMarco told a group of assembled reporters on Wednesday afternoon during a youth basketball event in Brooklyn. “The roster is built as such and I touched on it earlier — championship competitors, that’s always going to be the goal. It’s also about developing players, building the right culture, making sure we’re competitive every game.”
Sure, the other stuff — but really, title or bust. That’s no surprise, and it reflects a decision to move on from Sandy Brondello just a year after the Liberty captured that elusive title for the first time. To be sure, there were other factors involved with the decision to let Brondello go, and a clear partnership was on display on day one of DeMarco’s reign as head coach. Of course, that’s always the easiest day to do it.
For his part, DeMarco brings a healthy combination of humility and a willingness to learn (the word “genius” didn’t get uttered at this press conference) along with a strong pedigree of success in a variety of other basketball pursuits, from the NBA to international play. The NBA is a pathway to coaching in the WNBA now, that’s just a reality, and there’s no inherent problem with that fact, much as the deemphasis on WNBA experience does strike me as overreach in the aggregate at the moment.
That the NBA is missing an opportunity to improve its overall talent base by hiring more women as assistants and at the same time is reducing the number of women who are thus in position to get WNBA head coaching gigs in the process is a topic for another day.
And in Kolb/DeMarco, the division of labor is neater than it was. Brondello had plenty of her own ideas when it came to player personnel, befitting a WNBA lifer of her success, and the speed with which DeMarco parried a question about the roster makeup into an answer which made it clear he considered such questions the Department of Kolb spoke to how this new arrangement is set to work.
That is fine, incidentally, healthy even, with the jobs of head coach and president of basketball operations each now so enormous that Cheryl Reeve’s continued success in both speaks far less to the viability of cross-pollinating them than it does the singularity of Reeve herself.
But it also means that the duo have set the standard to reach so high that it is fair to wonder whether such expectations are reasonable for anyone. As Kolb made clear when he spoke about Brondello’s exit, even after the championship in 2024, her return wasn’t a sure thing. A 2025 season that, to my mind, cannot be considered underachieving wasn’t enough to save her job. A five seed despite the sheer number of injuries New York faced to its most important players constituted an overachievement in my view. (The people who make this call, though, disagreed.)
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And while DeMarco spoke about the roster assembled, well, it really hasn’t been assembled yet. It cannot be, not with so many free agents paired with a still-unresolved collective bargaining negotiation between the league and the WNBPA. It had to be encouraging for the Liberty that so many of its recent players were on hand for the presser — especially Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, who asked a question at the end of the formal press conference itself. But knowing precisely what roster Kolb even can build remains unknown at this time.
And does setting the bar at championship-or-bust put Kolb himself in the firing line? Over the last three seasons, Kolb’s Liberty are 91-33 with two trips to the WNBA Finals and a title. Would merely returning to the WNBA Finals be considered a disappointment to Liberty ownership? Should it, in a league with the Aces and Lynx and Fever and Mercury? Should it, with a new head coach in Year 1 of what he acknowledged would involve a learning curve? Should it, if that means moving on from a general manager who knows this league and its intricate rules as well as anyone? That seems absurd to me. But is that the new standard for the New York Liberty?
It’s all going to be fascinating for a franchise which, even in its most dire years, has never lacked for drama. From this perspective, assuming something of a similar roster in talent to 2025, a top-four finish and trip to the semifinals would constitute progress and a successful season.
Then again, the bar I’d have set for last season didn’t matter, either. There are other folks who will make that call.
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