With the playoffs fast approaching, teams like the New York Liberty are looking to maintain their rhythm as they try to finish in a favorable seeding position, while others like the Toronto Tempo are searching for any kind of late push, or at least a way to avoid one of the worst inaugural seasons in league history. For both teams, the common thread right now is the same: nagging injuries to key players, at the worst possible time.

For New York, Satou Sabally’s injury designation has been updated to “head” from “concussion protocol,” as reported by Madeline Kenney. It’s an update on a situation that’s already cost the Liberty two months of one of their most important offseason additions.

Sabally signed with New York this past offseason in one of the biggest moves of the year, expected to join Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones as part of the Liberty’s “Big Four.” Instead, she’s played just 13 games all season. This is her second concussion in eight months, after she was hit in the face by the Aces’ NaLyssa Smith on June 23, a frustrating echo of the concussion that ended her 2025 WNBA Finals run with Phoenix.

She’s also missed time this year to a cyst and a separate illness, on top of the concussion. When healthy, she’s shown exactly why New York made the move, averaging 10.4 points on 46% shooting with a 38.5% three-point rate in just 16.8 minutes a night. But durability has followed her throughout her career; injuries have limited her to only 149 games across seven pro seasons, an average of 21 games a year.

In Toronto, the injury news hit even closer to the ground. As the Tempo faced Dallas on Wednesday at the College Park Center in Arlington, Kiki Rice went down in the fourth quarter with an apparent ankle injury and had to be helped off the court, just days after finally returning from a Grade 3 ankle sprain that had already cost her roughly two months. Head coach Sandy Brondello said afterward that Rice was “okay” and wanted to return to the game, but the team held her out for the rest of the night as a precaution, per TSN’s Chelsea Leite.

Despite logging the second-most minutes on the team, Rice managed just 13 points as Toronto fell 88-94 to Dallas, who snapped a three-game skid behind a strong showing from Paige Bueckers. The loss extended Toronto’s losing streak to nine games, one of just five expansion teams in WNBA history to drop that many in a row, and left the Tempo at 10-22, 14th in the league, with playoff hopes all but gone.

For New York, Sabally’s situation carries real weight in what’s shaping up to be a genuinely tight playoff race. The Liberty sit eighth in the standings at 20-14, with seeding, and the level of competition they’ll face in the first round, still very much up for grabs.

The New York Liberty Need Satou Sabally For A Deep Postseason Run

With just ten games left in the regular season, the Liberty have no real margin for error. They’re comfortably ahead of Portland in the standings, but a lower seed means opening the playoffs against the league’s best teams instead of easing in. Their remaining schedule doesn’t do them any favors either, with matchups still to come against Indiana, Golden State and Minnesota, all legitimate tests.

That’s exactly why getting Sabally back matters so much. Her 6-foot-4 frame gives New York frontcourt versatility few teams can match, unlocking multi-positional lineups that can give opposing defenses real problems. She’s also been here before under playoff pressure, having led the Phoenix Mercury to the WNBA Finals just last year.

Without her and Leonie Fiebich, the team’s most reliable outside shooting threat, New York’s roster has lacked cohesion. The Liberty have leaned hard on Breanna Stewart as a result, a pattern that has exposed just how thin their frontcourt depth really is, most visibly in a lopsided 106-92 loss to Indiana.

On August 9, head coach Chris DeMarco said he remains optimistic Sabally will be back before the playoffs start, according to High Post Hoops. But that return isn’t automatic. She still has to clear the league’s concussion protocol in full, including independent neurological clearance, before she can play again.

Even if she does make it back in time, there’s a real question waiting behind that one: whether she can rebuild on-court chemistry with the rest of the roster fast enough, with almost no runway left before a playoff series that offers no room to work out the kinks. New York gets a chance to keep building without her on Friday, when they host the Los Angeles Sparks, another step in finding out just how much this roster can hold together until she’s back.