At 14 years-old New York Liberty developmental player Anneli Maley remembers, oh-so-clearly, watching her role model Rebecca Allen play for the Women’s National Basketball League’s (WNBL) Bulleen Boomers, now the Geelong Venom.
Just like with A-list celebrities, there’s this assumption that all Australians like Maley and Allen just know each other very well because they are Australian. But that’s not necessarily always the case. Maley met Allen right when Allen was first beginning her WNBA journey in around 2015, and the two were just acquaintances as Maley went through the Australian National team system. They were in the same industry, but they just knew each other by association.
But now, around a decade later, Maley considers the two to be incredibly close, calling Allen by the affectionate nicknames of “dawg” and “bestie” to describe the now-tight bond between the two Australians.
“They said ‘don’t meet your role models’, but I think I got pretty lucky about this one,” Maley told The IX Sports about Allen.
Maley, who hadn’t yet spent a full season in the WNBA before this season, is one of the players benefiting from the development pool, one of the roster expansion features in 2026 Collective Bargaining Agreement.
While she had been a hardship player in Chicago with the Sky four seasons ago at the beginning of the 2022 and then was cut by the Los Angeles Sparks before the season began in 2025, Maley has now spent considerable time in the league, and has an ideal person by her side to adapt to her first full season in the W.
Those close to Maley told her that she had struck gold with Allen because of not only her institutional knowledge of the league and the city of New York, but also because of her interpersonal skills and sociable personality.
“She always wants to do things,” Maley said about Allen. “She’s nice to everyone. So like everyone was like telling me that you are going to have the best time because you’re going to get to be with [Allen], and I was like, ‘Well, hell yeah, love that.’”
Allen has been a New York Liberty mainstay for the past decade. While she wasn’t officially drafted by the organization, her relationship with New York is similar to what might be expected between a player and the team that first gave them their first professional opportunity.
Allen was presented to the Liberty front office at the time by her agent who sent clips to a group that consisted of longtime WNBA executive and head coach Bill Laimbeer, general manager Kristin Bernert and now-Atlanta Dream general manager and former Liberty director of basketball operations Dan Padover.
The Liberty’s front office was sold when the Australian national team completed an overseas tour in the United States playing against WNBA teams during the W’s preseason in 2014. Allen was then signed by the Liberty during free agency in 2015 and she stayed with the franchise through its change of ownership in 2019.
Allen is one of a few current Liberty players that remembers the more modest and less professional days at the Westchester County Center in White Plains before the Barclays Center and Ellie the Elephant were even a reality. While Allen opted out of the 2020 COVID-19 bubble, she played in New York in 2021 and 2022 before getting traded to Connecticut in the deal that allowed Liberty current GM Jonathan Kolb to acquire Jonquel Jones.
But after three seasons away from the franchise that first believed in her, both she and the Liberty endured their own highs and lows. The franchise achieved what it hadn’t done in its history, winning the elusive title in 2024. And Allen hopped around to a few different teams, joining the Sun, Phoenix Mercury and Chicago Sky, but had to miss the 2024 Paris Olympics due to tearing her hamstring, a moment she recently said was the hardest in her life.
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But now, back with the WNBA franchise where she got her start, both Allen and the Liberty have goals they want to accomplish. Allen wants to be a part of what she helped build. While winning the Commissioner’s Cup trophy in June was the first trophy she ever won with the Liberty and in the league, that’s not enough — she wants to win a championship in New York.
Back around decade ago, Allen, the franchise and the league were constantly having to prove themselves. And now, in the middle of the WNBA’s golden age, the Liberty are hell bent on proving that their 2024 title wasn’t a fluke. Allen is driven by a storybook ending and the idea of finishing something she started with the organization where it all began for her.
“I’ve definitely probably romanticized the whole idea of it too,” Allen told The IX Sports. “And obviously within a season, there’s ups and downs and all of that. But I mean, I’ve been riding those waves pretty well.”
Allen’s steadiness has helped turn turbulence into success
The 2026 season so far has been a series of crests and troughs for the Liberty. Breanna Stewart has used her hand, wrist and arm ad nauseam to gesture exactly that. She curves her hand and wrist up and down like a snake or a wave of water to further illustrate the ups and downs of the season. Stewart, along with Jones, has uttered the phrase “turn the page” to the press too many times to count this season.
But if anyone on the roster has been exceptional at “turning the page,” it’s been Allen, who has endured a 2026 season that she believes is a microcosm of her entire career in the league. It’s been an ongoing cycle of being underestimated and then working hard to prove herself.
One of the earliest Liberty examples of this phenomenon was when Laimbeer pushed Allen to improve defensively. He called her a liability, and as a result she put in hours after practices with former player development coach and franchise legend Teresa Weatherspoon.
Flashing forward to 2026, Allen spent the first two plus months of the season racking up DNP after DNP. She made her Liberty season debut during the team’s fourth game in Portland against the Fire after spending a lot of training camp getting her conditioning right.
But then, after getting her feet wet in May coming off the bench and struggling to make shots, Allen was benched for most of the month of June while the Liberty were also trying to work in Betnijah Laney-Hamilton before she, too, was benched before being waived earlier this month.
Newer Liberty fans who didn’t know as much about Allen’s history with the franchise were confused as to why she was on the roster amid her struggles.
But Allen, as the consummate professional she is, waited for her opportunity. When Leonie Fiebich was ruled out with her left foot injury following the Liberty’s 99-86 win over the Lynx on July 3, head coach Chris DeMarco and his staff were searching. Who would be their starting wing?
First, they went with Rebekah Gardner, who struggled when the Liberty defense switched ball screens. She was too small to defend larger forwards and wings. Then DeMarco went to Marine Johannés to go for a three guard lineup alongside Sabrina Ionescu and Pauline Astier. Bu defensively, this also didn’t work.
And then DeMarco went to Allen, someone who has more size than Gardner and has a similar build to Fiebich. Was she 6’4? No. But she’s 6’2 with a 6’5 wingspan and has length. The Liberty teams of their championship window that began in 2023 have been based on how the rosters have been able to leverage their length. And when those Liberty teams truly take advantage of it, that has led to the most success.
And just like Fiebich, Allen can shoot, though a bit less consistently. But Allen being on this roster is an example of Kolb’s Noah’s Ark-type roster building serving its purpose. When one player goes down, there’s a similar one waiting in the wings, and that’s been Allen.
In the 11 games since Allen has become a starter, she’s averaging 8.5 points and 3.1 rebounds per game and shooting 45.5% from three. Before this stretch of games, Allen was just shooting just 17.6% from three. Her shooting splits have increased by over 158% following her 11 straight starts and more defined role.
Allen has also reminded the older fans who she is and introduced the newer ones to the player she’s always been with the franchise. Allen’s fan-favorite status in New York was based on the energetic plays she made. She’s built her career on game-swinging three-pointers, pivotal deflections, cutting off the ball and rebounding at key moments. And that’s exactly what she’s been providing in the past 11 games.
Ionescu played with Allen earlier on in the decade when the Liberty were still functioning as a quasi-start up with much loftier goals. Ionescu has gotten a front row seat over time as to how Allen makes an impact.
“I’ve always loved playing with her,” Ionescu said. “Who she is as a person, just how steady she is, but also on the court, like you know what you’re going to get from her every single night, and she kind of just brings a calming presence. She’s a veteran. She knows how to play the game. She understands her role. She knows how to play in the starting unit, and then she also knows how to play with the bench. And that’s something that I think you have to kind of go through to understand. And her ability to kind of get plugged into the starting unit and perform at a really high level speaks to who she is and why she’s made it so long in this league.”
Allen’s approach during this stretch of games has been to simply not force anything. She’s been making sure to take the open shots that the offense generates, whether that means on a simple drive and kick out or a Johannés bullet, like what came Allen’s way on Saturday against the Sun.
Allen’s skillset represents the evolving WNBA
When Allen joined the Liberty during the Laimbeerian era and then continued with the team during the Katie Smith era, a different style of basketball was being played. Wings like Allen were significant, but not nearly as important as they are today in the modern WNBA.
Allen was always a player who could have and should have played more earlier on in her Liberty career. But when Allen entered the league in 2015, the WNBA was still an “inside-heavy” league that didn’t embrace shooting like it does today. According to Padover, post the COVID-19 pandemic was when the WNBA’s leaned much more into a lot of Allen’s strengths, including her shooting, cutting and defensive switchability.
“I think her ability to stretch the floor if she was coming into the league right now probably gets her more minutes in the next 10 years, than it did the last 10 years,” Padover told The IX Sports.
There are wings like Allen that have much more important roles in the 2020s WNBA than the 2010s WNBA did. More and more players, like Fiebich and Mystics combo wing Sonia Citron, employ the skills that Allen came into the league with when she touched down in the United States just over a decade ago.
This begs the question: was Allen simply ahead of her time? And how much does that define her legacy in the WNBA?
Former Liberty assistant and now-Sparks offensive coordinator Zack O’Brien coached Allen in 2022 under Sandy Brondello, a season before the Jones trade. His mind went to a similar place as he thought about Allen’s game.
“If she grew up in a different time, it’s probably a little different,” O’Brien told The IX Sports. “And it’s not to take away anything she’s done, right? But it’s an interesting thought exercise.”
Maley, too, sees her role model as someone who was always ahead of her time, and part of that is because of Allen’s adaptability and versatility.
“She’s always been ahead of her time,” Maley said. “She’s a two-three man that has been able to shoot, post up, do everything. She has been like a player that you can put on any team and just adapts to anywhere.”
An impending retirement?
Allen hasn’t thought of her legacy as being “ahead of her time.” She reflects more on the moments when she was told she was either a defensive liability or just could have seen the floor more and didn’t.
“I think there’s always moments where I’ve had to prove myself constantly,” she told The IX Sports. “That’s something that I have found draining over the years, if I’m completely honest. But it’s also something that’s really built my character in a sense. I think it’s something that’s made me meet this season in a really positive way, too.”
Her approach has led to team success, but it’s unclear if it will yield the storybook ending that she envisioned. The romanticized plan is that this was going to be Allen’s final year in the WNBA. Retirement was something she really pondered seriously after she finished her 2025 season with the Sky, but the call from Liberty GM Kolb changed her calculus. The idea of winning a title in the place where she first got started began to sound too good to say no to.
As of late, Allen has been using her own personal savvy and innate social intelligence to market herself more broadly. She did pick up a marketing degree while she was playing overseas basketball during the winter months, after all.
Allen’s made headlines twice in the past four months. First was in early April, when she spoke about the impact of the 2026 CBA and her unsatisfactory player experiences while playing for the Sky. And second was just earlier this month, when she officially announced her impending retirement after this season on the “Under the Sportlight” podcast.
But when you ask folks around the 2026 New York Liberty, there’s less certainty. Head coach DeMarco didn’t really want to acknowledge her announcement of her retirement. He said it wasn’t “technically official,” and that the team was going to “have to revisit those conversations” because of how well Allen has played in addition to her invaluable skills as a communicator and connector.
Allen has the gift of gab, something she inherited from her father John. It’s a skill that has made her important in the locker room in addition to the floor.
“She will just make you laugh almost instantly, and I think she brings such a lightness to the locker room, and just like, a joy,” O’Brien said. “In addition to all the great things she does on the court. She’s one of the good ones.”
And that’s why DeMarco has been cagey about her retirement. Could this be a similar story to Carolyn Swords in Las Vegas, when Laimbeer convinced her to return for another season? Or even a Tiffany Hayes situation, where the Las Vegas Aces and Becky Hammon lured her out of retirement a season after she did so? To be clear, Hayes is still playing, but now for the Valkyries.
“Who knows?” was Maley’s response to the question of whether or not Allen would really reel it in after this season.
Especially if the Liberty don’t get where they need to go in 2026, could Allen be convinced that one more year would be how she could get her storybook ending? Could the player who was ahead of her time continue to extend it? Time will tell, and so will the Liberty’s finish in 2026.
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