Betnijah's Back: Liberty All-Star Returns For Final Stretch

Betnijah Laney will appear in her first WNBA game since May 17 as the New York Liberty gear up for a potential playoff run.

The star smiles upon the New York Liberty's postseason fortunes ... a WNBA All-Star, to be precise. 

Betnijah Laney will return to the Liberty lineup as New York gears up for its final five games, beginning on Saturday night in Phoenix (10 p.m. ET, YES). 

The Liberty (13-18) have five games left on their regular season schedule as they seek to make consecutive postseason appearances for the first time since 2015-17. They currently hold the seventh of eight WNBA playoff seeds, with Saturday's opponent, the Mercury (13-19) lingering one game behind.

Laney's return was heralded by a completely empty Liberty injury report, which will make Saturday's visit to Arizona the first game that the team has played with a full roster. She'll appear in her first WNBA contest since May 17. 

A Rutgers alumna, Laney joined the Liberty last season after earning the WNBA's Most Improved Player Award for her efforts with the Atlanta Dream in 2020. She followed that up by averaging 16.8 points and a career-best 5.2 assists (both appearing in the WNBA's top ten at the end of the year) in her first year in seafoam. Laney played a major role in the Liberty's return to the postseason last year, leading the team in scoring and repping New York at the 2021 WNBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas. 

The new Liberty contract offered a form of stability for Laney, who went through Chicago, Connecticut, and Indiana after entering the league as a second-round pick in 2015. A right knee injury delayed the start of Laney's 2022 campaign and she appeared in four games before undergoing an arthroscopic partial meniscectomy nearly two weeks after her last appearance. In those four games, Laney averaged 13.3 points and 4.3 assists before her medically-induced departure.

Despite her on-court absence, Laney remained an active prescience on the Liberty bench,  

"Without Betnijah, we're missing aggressiveness, heart, a defensive mind," teammate and 2022 Liberty All-Star Natasha Howard said in July about what the team loses in Laney's absence. "We miss pretty much everything, overall, that she does for us on offense and defense. We also miss her voice on the floor." 

"She brings a level of leadership," Michaela Onyenwere, another New York teammate and the WNBA's most recent Rookie of the Year, said in May. "She sees the floor, the game, and holds us accountable."

New York has re-inserted itself back into the WNBA playoff chase with wins in each of their last three, a streak that began with an 89-69 win over Phoenix on Sunday at Barclays Center.