One ringless season and the New York Liberty pushed the reset button. The management has the winningest coach in their history in Sandy Brondello. However, results played a minor role in the decision, according to GM Jonathan Kolb. “This is not about not winning or winning,” Kolb said. “It’s about how do we position ourselves to be at the top of the league in a real, sustainable way as the league evolves.” 

A ‘proactive’ move, as he called it. Brondello probably fell victim to her own standards after keeping Liberty afloat despite an injury-ravaged season, but the Liberty did not go for a hardship exception like many teams did. Instead, they brought Emma Meesseman and Stephanie Talbiot to provide support on July 27. Even after signing them, the roster count went below 10 a few times. So, why didn’t Kolb sign anyone on hardship, despite being eligible? The GM explains. 

Kolb said in his media conference, “Hardships have a lot of complexity to them in the sense of, for the situation we would have been in, we would have had to attach two injuries to those hardships, and what you do is you lock in the amount of games that those players will have to miss. When you’re dealing with the injuries that we went through this year, especially to those of Jonquel Jones and Brianna Stewart, there’s a moving timeline for when they are going to return.” Following is a snapshot of all injuries the New York Liberty suffered and the type:

Now that is a long list of absences. If you notice the type of injuries, none of the players had a defined timeline for returning. They were basically listed as day-to-day until the injury healed, which makes signing hardship players difficult. Take the Indiana Fever as an example for contrast. They suffered 5 season-ending injuries, where they knew these players wouldn’t be returning. 

In the case of Caitlin Clark, who was also day-to-day for a long time, her potential return was always going to be beyond the 7 days of the hardship player. For Liberty, the injuries were a limbo, and they took the call against signing hardship players. But with the quantity of injuries, there were multiple times where they could have signed emergency players, and Jonathan Kolb revealed they considered it at one point. 

Kolb continued, “Later in the year we did give serious consideration to applying for a hardship with the league. At that point in time, players we were interested in bringing that we felt could contribute were not interested in that. And other players sought out other opportunities with teams that would have had a longer and be able to prove themselves in ways that maybe means something more for their future in the WNBA. And then, quite honestly, at another stage when we looked at it, players that we were interested in were already overseas.” 

There is quite a web of problems you have to follow through to get players on temporarily. Especially for the Liberty, they have had a solid core set for 2025 and probably the coming years, and anyone from the outside coming in will likely only last for those 7 days. There is no long-term future for those players in this team. 

As opposed to Liberty, the Dallas Wings could get multiple valuable hardship signings to get them through the season because they are a team in transition.  Kolb went on to criticise the league for their injury troubles, “I just think that speaks more to the rules of our league currently that are in place than you know whether a hardship player would or wouldn’t have impacted our season.” Kolb finished. 

The league has implemented the hardship rule to navigate its problem of limited roster spots. As the season becomes longer, the injuries have already raised red flags. The hardship contract system has a lot of flaws, like Kolb pointed out, and there are few ways to make it better unless the roster spots increase. The league can’t hand out hardship contracts for every injury, but the teams can’t sustain performance because of them. Ultimately, it affects the WNBA product on the court.

Moving on to Liberty’s case, their situation ultimately culminated in an underwhelming season, more than doubling their losses from 2024. Stewart suffered an MCL strain in the playoffs, but she soldiered through. She practically carried them in that Game 3, but the Liberty crashed out, and so did Sandy Brondello. While Kolb mentioned that it was a ‘fork-in-the-road’, anyone replacing Brondello might crumble under pressure. 

This New York Liberty Precedent Can Haunt Their Next Coach

Sandy Brondello served as head coach of the New York Liberty for 160 regular-season games, of which she won 107, a 0.607 record. That includes one ring and one finals finish, along with 4 continues playoff finishes. Before New York, she had a ring in Phoenix while bringing them to the playoffs every year. The Liberty fired such a celebrated coach to ‘embrace change’? If that is acceptable or not is up to the fans’ preference, but it does add pressure on the next coach that they hire. 

“I think that this is a place of earned pressure, and I feel that myself, ownership, and our players lean into that and aren’t afraid of that,” Kolb said. “I don’t feel this is a place we need to sell;I think this is a place that is a privilege to work at, and it’s a privilege to have a fan base such as ours that is so impassioned, that they’re the soul of what we do. If that resonates with the candidate, we’ll be excited to learn more about that.”

And Brondello herself knew that. “This is a professional organization, and the coaches, I know I’ll probably be the first one to blame, and that’s OK. That’s fine. I got wide enough shoulders here.” She had said. The expectations are sky high when you become a Liberty coach. So the next one might feel the need to win in their first season itself. There could even be underlying reasons for Brondello’s firing. Regardless, whoever follows Sandy Brondello has an uphill task. 

The management might talk with him and give them insurance, but the fact that they fired their most successful coach after 1 mediocre season will play in the back of their head. That could lead to underperformance and then recycling coaches, pulling the Liberty into a vicious circle that many other teams have been through. Most of them are regular basement dwellers.