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The New York Liberty checked off the last items on their 2024 title to-do list on Saturday afternoon, accepting their championship rings and raising a championship banner into the rafters at Barclays Center before their season-opening win over the Las Vegas Aces.
The arena was packed, the fans were loud and the emotions ran high as most of last year’s team — including Ivana Dojkic, who is no longer in the league, and the injured Betnijah Laney-Hamilton— accepted their rings.
We heard y'all wanted the full ceremony? WE GOT YOU pic.twitter.com/PariqTVT6m
— New York Liberty (@nyliberty) May 17, 2025
New York’s Natasha Cloud, who spent last season with the Phoenix Mercury, was merely a spectator to the ceremony.
“It's a standard,” she said of the banner that now hangs in the arena. “I understood that with coming here to New York, and I want to be a part of that standard.”
Cloud has a ring from her time with the 2019 Washington Mystics, but the COVID-19 pandemic robbed her of the opportunity to have a full ring and banner ceremony in front of the fans. She admitted that it made her all the more determined to get another one.
In the meantime, she’s fine basking in her teammates’ triumph.
“I’ve never got to experience an actual championship. I’ve won one. I have a ring,” she said. “Seeing how big it was for the city to win its first ever for the organization, for [Breanna Stewart] to come home to New York and do it, those are all big things. For [Sabrina Ionescu] to win the first one, [Jonquel Jones], who has been going after it for all these years. You can't help but be happy for your teammates, right?”
Head coach Sandy Brondello has been through this before, leading the 2014 Mercury to a championship. When it comes to Cloud, Marine Johannès and the other new additions to this year’s Liberty team, she wanted them to be a part of the celebration.
“I want them to still be a part of it and feel it, because that's what we all want, isn't it?” she said pregame. “A year from here, hopefully we're doing it again. and some will be the first time just seeing it and being around it. And it's pretty special. So feel the energy, feel how much it actually means.”
The Liberty now set their sights on a repeat
It’s an awkward transition going from the pomp and circumstance of a ring ceremony into a regular season game, but once the ceremony ended, the Liberty had no problem locking into the contest. It was game 1 of 44 for the reigning champs, and it was a 92-78 win.
For Stewart, turning the page wasn’t a problem.
“[It’s] a reflection and appreciation for last season and obviously [we’re] very excited to see the rings,” she said. “But once we walked off that court, it was like, ‘alright, stay in it now because [the Aces are] hungry and they want to come after us with everything that they got.”
Ionescu used a phrase that her teammates seem to have adopted. For her, it was about staying in the moment — enjoying the celebration while not losing sight of the task at hand.
“I was just where my feet were at,” she said. “I've never experienced this before and that was something I didn't want to lose sight of just with the fact that there was a game coming up.”
The next time the Liberty take the court, there won’t be any pregame ceremony. There also won’t be 17,000 New York fans cheering them on. It will be on the road against a Chicago Sky team that the Liberty struggled against last year. They have until next Thursday to prepare.
