Liberty's Pre-Playoff Moves Could Be Their Magnum Opus

Jonathan Kolb earned WNBA hardware this week for his preseason work with the New York Liberty, but securing the futures of both Betnijah Laney and Kayla Thornton may be the most clutch.

The list of certainties in professional basketball grows shorter with each passing week. Jonathan Kolb, however, fulfilled the destiny of his temporary residency on that shortlist. 

The New York Liberty general manager's fulfillment of a long-gestating vision made him a shoo-in for the WNBA's Executive of the Year Award. Transferring the seafoam-branded jerseys of Jonquel Jones, Breanna Stewart, and Courtney Vandersloot from his office to their lockers was rewarded by the Liberty's most lucrative WNBA regular season to date (32-8) and secured the second seed of the 2023 playoffs behind only defending champion Las Vegas. 

New York's personal playoff quest began on Friday night with a 90-75 victory over the Washington Mystics in the opener of a best-of-three set at Barclays Center. A chance to wrap the series early lands on Tuesday night (7 p.m. ET, ESPN). 

via New York Liberty

Detractors can call Kolb and the Liberty's success luck, happenstance, blessings from the basketball goddesses. A lottery leap, after all, secured the top draft pick that became Sabrina Ionescu at the onset of the 2020 WNBA Draft. Rebuilds in Chicago and Seattle, one could argue, respectively yielded Vandersloot and Stewart (the same case could've been made with Jones from Connecticut had the Sun not enjoyed an Alyssa Thomas breakout in Uncasville). 

Kolb's vision, however, is perhaps best personified through two of his final acts just before awards season tipped off. They could go down as his metropolitan magnum opus if all pans out.

With the WNBA's attention on the present, Kolb inched away from the crowd to work on the future not once but twice: on Sept. 1, New York announced the re-signing of Kayla Thornton, who accompanied Jones in a three-team trade with the Sun and Dallas Wings. Eight days later, the Liberty also re-upped with Betnijah Laney, retaining a 2021 All-Star and metropolitan hoops heroine (previously starring at Rutgers). 

Hosting the metropolitan futures of both Laney and Thornton was an obvious message from Kolb and Co. (a group of collaborators that includes team CEO Keia Clarke, assistant general manager Ohemaa Nyanin, and head coach Sandy Brondello) that their vision is intended to sustain not just a season but a generation of New York basketball. Anyone involved in seafoam affairs has been quick to brush off the "superteam" label, but they certainly wouldn't mind protecting such a reputation for years to come.

The specific re-additions of Laney and Thornton, however, prove symbolic in the past, present, and future archives that Kolb has established, one that will carry on the themes and ideas set forth when the Liberty earned ... and have now defended ... the Barclays Center right.

Brandon Todd, NY Liberty

Kayla, Got Me on My D's

The irony that surrounds a supposed superteam is that only sinks or floats as high or low as its depth stars allow it to. New York was well-stocked in the department as it was to the tune of names like Stef Dolson and Marine Johannes, who were left over on the New York ledgers after a sacrificial purge that bid farewell to Bec Allen, Crystal Dangerfield, Michaela Onyenwere, DiDi Richards, and Sami Whitcomb (not to mention All-Star starter Natasha Howard). 

But questions about the Liberty's depth began to surface when Dolson was dealt a medical blow that kept her out six weeks and Johannes struggled to recapture the magic that made her a household name. In the midst of it all was Thornton, a defensive stud out of Dallas who made a name for herself at UTEP before entering the Association as an undrafted free agent in 2014. 

It would've been easy for Thornton to get lost in the hullaballoo of the Liberty's historic splurge: at 30, she had established herself as a role player with a lasting prescience but as pressing as her Dallas defense had been, few would see her as a needle-mover, as the difference between a championship program and a gang of also-rans.

Kolb couldn't have disagreed more.

"I think it was everything for us," Kolb said of Thornton's arrival. "Kayla Thornton was in no way a throw-in in that trade. She was a player that we tried to acquire for many years and when we had the opportunity to do it. we jumped at it. So for us, we knew we were going to be getting somebody that is relentless defensively and help us on the glass."

Thornton has vindicated Kolb and management's faith and then some: as New York's most consistent bench contributor (evidenced by a reserve-best 2.3 win shares the player affectionately referred to as "KT" has been the depth chart diamond necessary to give those in front of her a much-needed rest and prove that the Liberty are truly a super "team" if they ever wanted to wear such a label. 

As the playoffs push forward, Thornton is more than happy to make the plays that won't win anyone their daily fantasy basketball matchups.

“I go out there and do what KT does: be aggressive on both sides," Thornton said in the lead-up to Washington's postseason visits. "Whatever my team needs me to do, of course I’m there. Just because it’s not on the stat sheet doesn’t mean it’s not important ... I just come to do my job, go about my business, up and down, I’m focused, getting it done.”

Brandon Todd, NY Liberty

The Scarlet Knight Rises

The road to the greatest, most memorable endeavors in sports ... especially those that end with a trophy hoist ... is paved with sacrifices. No matter what happened during the 2023 WNBA season, it felt like Betnijah Laney was on pace to part with some of the new-decade norms she earned and kept.

Laney was already a metropolitan hardwood heroine, albeit on the other side of the Hudson River. Following in the footsteps of her mother Yolanda (whose Cheyney State jersey has been a staple of Betnijah's pregame wardrobe), Laney worked through C. Vivian Stringer's hardwood curriculum at Rutgers. Her reward was second-round honors at the 2015 WNBA Draft, beginning a nomadic career that also visited Connecticut and Indiana before she found clarity on her own accord with the Atlanta Dream at the WNBA's bubbled endeavor in Florida. 

A Bradenton breakout that led to Most Improved Player honors and put Laney on pace to become the Liberty's first veteran acquisition of the supposed superteam era, the first piece of a sizable puzzle. Several experiments followed ... such as the additions of champions like Howard and Whitcomb ... and made their impact, but none more so than Laney. 

She simultaneously proved that her bubbled affair was no fluke but that she was capable of larger affairs on a winning squad. Laney was the leader the Liberty needed while a de facto rookie Ionescu healed from early injuries brought about by overuse. It led to her first All-Star honor previously denied to her by pandemic restrictions. An injury prevented her from building on that in 2022 but Laney still impressed with a 17-point showing in the Liberty's improbably playoff win as a seventh-seed in a return to Chicago last late summer.

When looking at the Liberty roster, Laney seemed like the ideal tradeable asset through her own accomplishments: a proven player, fighter, and leader who could easily be passed over to a rebuilding program in need of a breathing foundation.

Instead, she's New York's. 

The 29-year-old has gained her offensive prowess and then some: she's averaging 15.5 points and shooting over 52 percent from the field since August began and she kept New York in Game 1 of the Washington series through a rugged effort that saw her score 14 first-half points, the final couple on a buzzer-beater that more or less completed a comeback from an early, lasting deficit.  

Laney's most notable contributions, however, stem on the defensive end. Head coach Brondello has often placed her on the opponent's most potent threat and it has since yielded a Defensive Player of the Year campaign from the vocal Liberty faithful that has turned out in droves to support metropolitan basketball's most undeniable championship run in over a decade.

"Bee takes pride in playing the right way,' Brondello said. "I mean, she always guards the best player and does a great job of that. But we know she can score points too, in a variety of ways. So it's been a focal point of us all season long just to get Bee going. we're putting her in good spots to be aggressive and then her just making great plays. So that makes us harder to guard when we've got attacks from so many different spots on the floor. Bee is a competitor and she keeps getting better and better."

Between Laney's first-half sustenance and Ionescu's newly-restored prowess from deep, the first chapter of the first endgame of this super story was penned by its beginning. With both Laney and Ionescu in it for the immediate long-haul alongside Thornton, they're already penning a sequel.