On Thursday night New York Liberty head coach Chris DeMarco yelled, “Help, help, help!” with his arms spread out wide while Seattle Storm guard Jade Melbourne drove past Sabrina Ionescu from the wing. Without Jonquel Jones in the paint, there wasn’t much rim protection.
Betnijah Laney-Hamilton and Leonie Fiebich rushed to help as DeMarco pleaded, but it was too late. The bouncy Melbourne scored over Fiebich’s out stretched arms and the score became tied with Ionescu just watching her person score on her.
That was only the beginning of a night when the Liberty gave up 99 points and eventually lost to the Seattle Storm, a team ranked second to last in the WNBA standings.
Two days prior, Ionescu and Jones hard hedged on a Jackie Young and A’ja Wilson pick-and-roll, which turned into a Ionescu steal and score on the other end. It was in the final two minutes of that Tuesday night game against the Las Vegas Aces where Ionescu shut the door on an Aces comeback. She hit a 26-foot three-pointer over Wilson’s contest, and dished out two straight assists to Breanna Stewart and Jones to seal the 87-76 victory.
These two scenes illustrate how Ionescu has been night and day for the Liberty since she returned to play on June 14.
While Ionescu’s first game back in June illustrated maturity and poise — she didn’t force her shots like she did in her first game of the season prior to her back injury — it hasn’t always been smooth sailing in the past six games she has played.
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In New York’s past six games, they have gone 3-3 and achieved flashes of their potential alongside ugly under performances, especially recently against some of the league’s youngest and sometimes least potent teams. Across that same stretch, they’ve had the seventh highest scoring offense, and are eighth in three-point percentage and assists per game. While their net rating across the past six games is tied for third overall, their defensive rating is sixth and their turnover percentage is ranked 12th.
During this time, Ionescu’s stats haven’t really jumped off the page either. She’s averaging 9.3 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3 assists per game, along with an overall field goal percentage of 37.7%.
Why exactly has this been a difficult transition for Ionescu?
She has been seen as the key to leveling up the Liberty’s offense from proficient, as was on display during their seven game winning streak without Ionescu, to masterful and could land the team back in the WNBA Finals.
According to Jones, the struggles have been partially a result of how much around the Liberty is new in 2026. It’s not just the coaching staff, but also DeMarco’s system. Ionescu isn’t walking back into the Sandy Brondello scheme that she had run for years.
“I think it’s just giving her time,” Jones said. “Just being patient with her, understanding that it’s going to come, and just she trusts us, we trust her. Nothing’s going to change in that sense, and just allowing time and reps, and all of that to kind of allow everything of come into place.”
On June 19, when it was time for the Liberty to play the Mystics for the second time in just under a week, Ionescu was more aggressive, but she missed multiple reads that teammates and coaches had expected a cerebral lead guard like Ionescu to make. Unlike in the first game against Washington five days prior, she forced it and the Liberty couldn’t attempt some of the more open shots that better decisions would have created.
Then, just two days later during the WNBA’s 30th anniversary game in Los Angeles, Ionescu dialed it back a bit too much, looking hesitant and not within the flow of the offense. This led to some concern from fans who wondered how one third of the big three that includes Stewart and Jones was going to find her way.
Against the Sparks, Ionescu attempted three total shots in 22 minutes played. Was she being iced out of the offense or was there something deeper here at play? At first look it was all quite reminiscent of three seasons ago, when Marine Johannès would come off the bench and try to find her footing alongside Ionescu, Jones and Courtney Vandersloot.
According to basketball writer Lucas Kaplan, something similar could be happening to Ionescu, especially against the Sparks:
“I don’t think the Liberty know quite yet … what they can really run to get [Ionescu] a good look just yet because she hasn’t played quite a lot,” he explained. “This is a stark contrast from Marine Johannès, who comes in the game and has actions that they know they can run for her.”
Johannès, who has had to integrate herself into an established system so many times while playing in New York, was asked what she believes the key to Ionescu finding her footing could be. “It’s tough because we don’t really practice,” she said following the loss to the Mystics on June 19. “So it’s maybe hard for her to come back and play every two days, and we understand that.”
Stewart, one of Ionescu’s significant on-court partners, expressed that there needs to be patience, but that she and her teammates can do more to get Ionescu feeling comfortable.
“It’s on us, her teammates, to continue to give her that confidence,” Stewart told The IX Basketball in a phone interview. “Continue to uplift her, and know that, it takes time even if you weren’t out for all these games, it takes time to get a flow back into it.”
The onus should also be on the coaching staff to integrate Ionescu as well. Kaplan mentioned that in particular against the Sparks, the Liberty tried taking advantage of Los Angeles’ smaller guards, routinely posting up Fiebich on her defender instead of trying to put Ionescu in actions to get her more comfortable. He questioned if they leaned into that a bit too much.
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How exactly does DeMarco want Ionescu to be functioning on this team? What is Ionescu’s ideal function on this team? One way to measure function is usage rate.
During Ionescu’s four All-Star seasons between 2022 and 2025, her overall usage rate according to Basketball Reference fluctuated between over 23% and a bit over 28%. So far in just seven games played in 2026 her usage rate is at 20.9%.
“We’re gonna have her play in a way that is best for her and best for our team,” DeMarco said when asked about her usage. “And if we start saying, ‘Hey, Sabrina should have 23%, Stew should have 21% and Satou [Sabally] should have 17%,’ it’s an impossible way to look at this thing, and it’s just not the right way to look at it. This is a team game, and if [Ionescu] has a game where she has 30% usage, and we win, great. If she has one where it’s more like 15% usage, and we win, great.”
Based on that answer, it’s all a work in progress during a season when DeMarco has had so many of his players in and out of the lineup. But, let’s take DeMarco at his word. What was Ionescu’s usage rate in her best game of the season, on Tuesday against the Las Vegas Aces where she had a 16-10 point-rebound double double with four assists to boot?
According to WNBA advanced stats: 23.4%. There were also flashes where Ionescu found Stewart on her cutting actions, a look that makes the Liberty incredibly hard to guard and one that we haven’t seen all too much of this season. Instead, Stewart has mostly received the ball from Jones, Johannès and rookie Pauline Astier.
DeMarco graded the Liberty’s execution on both ends in that game a nine out of 10. He even alluded to a moment where Ionescu got scored on, but still followed the defensive game plan that the coaches put forward.
“It’s hard sometimes if we’re in a specific game plan and somebody scores, like to stick with it,” he said postgame. “Or obviously fans, whoever’s watching the game, it’ll look like, hey, [Ionescu] might have just got scored on, and really the game plan might be for her to be in help, or whatever it is.”
Two days later against the Storm her usage dropped to 20.3%. She scored 14 points and added 5 assists, more what to expect from Ionescu.
This game, however, wasn’t about the offense. The Liberty scored 89 points. But instead of staying with it defensively, Ionescu simply didn’t have it to begin with, and that feeling appeared to spread to the rest of the team.
Jones was visibly frustrated with herself and the entire team following that 99-88 loss. “It’s not about the reps,” she said. “It’s not about playing time, it’s not about none of that stuff. It’s about having some heart and playing with some fucking heart.”
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When Ionescu’s defense is lacking the appropriate grit and isn’t following the game plan, that can hurt the Liberty just as much as her not making the right reads with the ball in her hands or missing an open three-point look.
When reflecting on what Ionescu’s reintegration process has been like before the disastrous Seattle game, DeMarco thought she was playing a bit too unselfishly early on. But Ionescu needs to be unselfish defensively, and that means putting in the effort even when she’s made a mistake. She can’t just be watching Melbourne or Flau’jae Johnson run the floor like it’s a track.
While Ionescu needs patience and has it from her teammates and coach, she also needs to remember that she’s one of the voices this locker room looks to, in addition to Stewart and Jones. The example she sets is going to be critical in how the Liberty become a team that lives up to its potential, rather than one that just floats around it.
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