FILM STUDY: Takeaways from the New York Liberty’s hot start before their matchup with the Las Vegas Aces

FILM STUDY: Takeaways from the New York Liberty’s hot start before their matchup with the Las Vegas Aces

The New York Liberty have taken a well-deserved breath after completing the first chunk of their schedule, 13 games in 27 days bookended by uneasy five-point wins over the Washington Mystics.

They now face the Las Vegas Aces on Saturday morning in the first rematch of the 2023 WNBA Finals, a rematch they hope will await them this fall. Though the Aces don’t quite look like world-beaters just yet, sitting at 6-5 and sorely missing Chelsea Gray, they are still the standard for the Liberty to meet.

But even without facing Vegas over those 27 days, New York has already accomplished quite a lot in 2024. They sit at 11-2, having clinched home-court advantage in the Commissioner Cup Final, which will be played on June 25 against the Minnesota Lynx.

All this without Courtney Vandersloot (personal) and Nyara Sabally (back) for much of the seven-game winning streak the sea foam are currently riding. Of course, it helps to have Jonquel Jones playing at, or even exceeding, the level of her 2021 MVP campaign. Per minute, she’s blocking more shots, assisting more often, committing less fouls and turnovers, and scoring more efficiently from two and three, though with slightly less volume.

She is one of the very best players in the world, plain and simple.

Still, there’s more to dive into, regarding both her excellence and the other Libs contributing to this hot start. So let’s do it.

Leonie leading the bench

After their first week of play, I highlighted Nyara Sabally as a major positive, stepping up from the bench unit to provide solid minutes as a backup post, looking far more spry on both ends of the court.

Well, she’s been out with that aforementioned back injury (OUT on Saturday), which tested something else I wrote about New York’s bench:

Who of Ivana Dojkić, Leonie Fiebich, and Kennedy Burke is going to step up and help Brondello form a consistent second or third unit? My early bet is on Fiebich, who the Liberty are currently using as a 6’4” shooting guard.

It’s still early, but I might have to cash this bet, given that Fiebich has seen double-digit minutes in seven of the last eight games, bringing all the versatility that you’d expect from a 6’4” shooting guard. She even closed Sunday’s win over Washington over Kayla Thornton, playing a career-high 25 minutes and adding a dozen points.

The transition from high-volume focal point to bit-player in an offense is tough no matter what, and can only be helped with time on the court. But for the back-to-back Spanish League MVP, it’s defense that’s keeping her on the court, allowing enough minutes for her offense to ultimately shine through.

She’s just quick enough at the point of attack to bother both of the Indiana Fever guards with her length...

...and to force Natasha Cloud into a turnover at the point-of-attack...

So when Fiebich is doing stuff like that, or using her size to get stops at the rim, both defending the post and in help...

...or grabbing four offensive rebounds in one half of play, as she did against the Atlanta Dream, her leash grows longer. And with more minutes, Fiebich grows “more comfortable,” as she’s often put it this season. Thus, New York’s offense grows more dangerous as a result...

Sandy Brondello is not surprised at Fiebich’s emergence, nor the 24-year-old rookie’s strong defense: “No, I knew what I was getting. That’s why I said her versatility, and you know, that helps us.”

Fiebich isn’t the only bench player hooping, of course. Kayla Thornton has stepped into the starting lineup and won her minutes handily in Vandersloot’s absence. Kennedy Burke has also enjoyed some nice spurts in recent games, more of a driver than a shooter on the perimeter, with all three seeing minutes next to Breanna Stewart playing the 5.

New York may be missing Sabally as a true third big, but they’re trying to make up for it by being long and annoying as hell on the wing, and mostly doing it. For her part, Stewart feels that all this length next to her has made her minutes playing the 5 even sweeter.

“I think that after the subs come in, 2-through-5 is all like 6’2”, 6’3”, 6’4”, and we’re able to switch almost everything,” she says. “If there’s mismatches, we understand that, but the versatility is kind of cool, because offensively we can all be in different spots.”

Even while missing two rotation staples, the Liberty’s bench is clearly improved from last season. The vision GM Jonathan Kolb laid out for the reserves, one of versatility — though Kolb did clarify his disdain for buzzwords as such — is coming to fruition.

Leonie Fiebich is leading that charge.

Pick-and-roll problems

Currently, New York is rocking the league’s 4th-ranked defense. While that’s probably a tad lower than Sandy Brondello would like to be, it’s effective enough to rack up wins while their offense operates at the top of the league. Still, issues have popped up. Most notably, defending the pick-and-roll.

After Sunday’s game, they ranked 9th in points per possession allowed when a pick-and-roll ball-handler either shot or made a pass directly leading to a shot, per Synergy Sports. And it’s easy to see why...

Perhaps in an attempt to keep their best rebounders close to the basket, or to keep their defense out of rotation New York has played quite a bit of straight-up pick-and-roll defense this season, 2v2.

Occasionally, as in the above clip, it’s put too great a stress on the Liberty’s perimeter defenders. Other times, two Liberty defenders will get caught somewhere between a switch and a hedge, confused about the coverage and negating their length in the process...

It’s still too early to call this a pronounced weak-spot for the Liberty, who largely get positive results when they execute whatever scheme they’re in. Jonquel Jones is still mobile enough to switch out onto the perimeter (and do about anything else on the court), which Brondello’s team will often lean on late in games.

But their pick-and-roll defense is something to keep an eye on, frequently asking a lot of their perimeter defenders, who have done a decent job getting over screens. Still, Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, for all her gifts on that end, is built like one huge muscle, and can get tagged on screens. Courtney Vandersloot is on the other end of the spectrum, slithery enough to avoid screens but small enough to get buried if a driver can gain a slight edge.

This is the #1 thing to watch for over the next few games for New York.

A blossoming Ionescu-Jones partnership

Jonquel Jones isn’t succeeding all by herself, to be clear.

One of the reasons she’s gotten to so many of her spots this season is her most frequent partner in screening actions on the offensive end, Sabrina Ionescu. We’ve covered Ionescu’s career-best ability to keep her dribble alive, get into the paint, and consistently hit floaters and layups or dish the ball to the perimeter.

In an effort to prevent this downhill pressure, defenses are extending their hedges or outright trapping Ionescu more often, which lets Jones play in the middle of the floor. We know she can hit those pick-and-pop threes — she’s shooting 37% from deep since joining the Libs — but more importantly, Jones is an excellent decision-maker from the perimeter.

If Breanna Stewart is camped out underneath the rim, Jones can enter the ball to her and play the high-low game, or spray it wherever else it needs to go on the court. It’s not that these reads are particularly complex or difficult, but rather that Jones executes them so quickly and smoothly...

“I mean, I think my decision-making has been good, just trying to keep the game as simple as possible,” says Jones. “If someone is open, give them the ball... really just keeping it simple, not over-thinking it. I think the next area of growth will be, when teams pressure me, needing to get downhill.”

It might be a stretch to say that’s the ‘next’ area of growth for Jones, though, because we’ve seen her do just that, this season, even when there’s traffic in front of her...

Sandy Brondello put it plainly: “We really like her in pick-and-rolls and rolling, I think that’s where she’s really effective.”

Make no mistake though, Ionescu deserves major credit here. She’s forcing those doubles and hedges that take Jones’ primary defender out of the picture to be airtight; if not, she’s simply waiting them out and continuing to the basket anyway. On a play like this, Ionescu patiently waits for Bri Jones to recover to JJ, but still has the speed to get by DeWanna Bonner to the cup...

Ionescu states that “just being able to work this offseason on speed, physicality, quickness, strength has helped me on both sides of the ball ... in terms of getting downhil, getting to the basket, getting to my floater, I wasn’t able to have that spring in my step the last couple of seasons due to injury, and now I’ve been able to get it back.”

Still, as always, there’s room to grow. I think Ionescu has been just a tad too reliant on the floater. Or rather, too eager to take it.

If she can get to it, it’s going up, but there have been a few plays like these where a chance to skip the ball to the other side of the court — where a greater advantage lies — goes unnoticed...

When Ionescu rises up to take the shot, there are four defenders on her side of the court, while Bonner is on a lonely island between Jones and Fiebich.

Ionescu has had a great season thus far. She was awesome in New York’s biggest victory of the season so far against the Connecticut Sun, which clinched the Cup Finals berth. She’s stepped into a full-on primary ball-handling role in Vandersloot’s absence while continuing to be active without the rock, in addition to being a slightly less destructive defender on the other end. (It’s still not great.)

All in all, she’s fighting a less-efficient-than-normal Stewie, as the runner-up MVP on the Liberty so far. But it’d be nice to see her use her skills getting into the lane to make a few more passes to the other side of the court.

Overall, too negative for the host of the June 25 Commissioner’s Cup Final, off to an 11-2 start? I mean, their pick-and-roll defense hasn’t been as porous as some of the league’s worst defenses, that’s for sure. And Ionescu is at the start of what looks to be easily the best season of her career thus far, five years in.

The New York Liberty, though, have greater goals than an 11-2 start or a Commissioner’s Cup Final. Hell, they won the Cup last season, defeating the Las Vegas Aces on the road, but that’s not the lasting memory of this budding rivalry from 2023.

“It still stings obviously,” says Stewart of the Finals loss. “[Especially] those first couple months afterwards, knowing we were so close. But I think now looking ahead and looking forward, making sure that we’ve all learned from our mistakes, we’ve looked back on it and now we’re having fun this year.”

Indeed it’s been a blast, but to keep the good times rolling, the Liberty will be playing for a bit more than fun on Saturday afternoon in Vegas. We’ll see how their pick-and-roll defense fairs, if Leonie Fiebich can outshine rookie sensation Kate Martin off the bench, how the Ionescu-Jones partnership continues to unfold, and more.

Tip-off is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. ET.