The New York Liberty checked off the final gadgets on their 2024 title to-do record on Saturday afternoon, accepting their championship rings and elevating a championship banner into the rafters at Barclays Heart earlier than their season-opening win over the Las Vegas Aces.
The world was packed, the followers had been loud and the feelings ran excessive as most of final 12 months’s group — together with Ivana Dojkic, who’s not within the league, and the injured Betnijah Laney-Hamilton— accepted their rings.
New York’s Natasha Cloud, who spent final season with the Phoenix Mercury, was merely a spectator to the ceremony.
“It is a typical,” she mentioned of the banner that now hangs within the area. “I understood that with coming right here to New York, and I need to be part of that commonplace.”
Cloud has a hoop from her time with the 2019 Washington Mystics, however the COVID-19 pandemic robbed her of the chance to have a full ring and banner ceremony in entrance of the followers. She admitted that it made her all of the extra decided to get one other one.
Within the meantime, she’s superb basking in her teammates’ triumph.
“I’ve by no means acquired to expertise an precise championship. I’ve gained one. I’ve a hoop,” she mentioned. “Seeing how huge it was for the town to win its first ever for the group, for [Breanna Stewart] to return residence to New York and do it, these are all huge issues. For [Sabrina Ionescu] to win the primary one, [Jonquel Jones], who has been going after it for all these years. You may’t assist however be completely satisfied to your teammates, proper?”
Head coach Sandy Brondello has been by means of this earlier than, main the 2014 Mercury to a championship. With regards to Cloud, Marine Johannès and the opposite new additions to this 12 months’s Liberty group, she wished them to be part of the celebration.
“I need them to nonetheless be part of it and really feel it, as a result of that is what all of us need, is not it?” she mentioned pregame. “A 12 months from right here, hopefully we’re doing it once more. and a few would be the first time simply seeing it and being round it. And it is fairly particular. So really feel the power, really feel how a lot it really means.”
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The Liberty now set their sights on a repeat
It’s an ungainly transition going from the pomp and circumstance of a hoop ceremony into an everyday season sport, however as soon as the ceremony ended, the Liberty had no downside locking into the competition. It was sport 1 of 44 for the reigning champs, and it was a 92-78 win.
For Stewart, turning the web page wasn’t an issue.
“[It’s] a mirrored image and appreciation for final season and clearly [we’re] very excited to see the rings,” she mentioned. “However as soon as we walked off that court docket, it was like, ‘alright, keep in it now as a result of [the Aces are] hungry they usually need to come after us with every little thing that they acquired.”
Ionescu used a phrase that her teammates appear to have adopted. For her, it was about staying within the second — having fun with the celebration whereas not dropping sight of the duty at hand.
“I used to be simply the place my ft had been at,” she mentioned. “I’ve by no means skilled this earlier than and that was one thing I did not need to lose sight of simply with the truth that there was a sport developing.”
The subsequent time the Liberty take the court docket, there gained’t be any pregame ceremony. There additionally gained’t be 17,000 New York followers cheering them on. It is going to be on the highway towards a Chicago Sky group that the Liberty struggled towards final 12 months. They’ve till subsequent Thursday to arrange.