((Automated translation by Reuters, please see disclaimer https://bit.ly/rtrsauto)) by Amy Tennery
The New York Liberty’s long comeback story reached an exciting new chapter with a second straight appearance in the WNBA Finals this week, the team once relegated to a 2,100-seat stadium in the suburbs rocked the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
The top-seeded Liberty eliminated Las Vegas in the semifinals on Sunday, a year after the Aces deprived them of the title, and will contend for their first title against the winner of a semifinal series between the Connecticut Sun and the Minnesota Lynx.
Their success on the field has been accompanied by considerable gains in the guestbook, with an average of 12,729 spectators during the regular season – up 64% from last year – and a 152% increase in attendance. season tickets in the room they share with the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets.
“It’s a brick-by-brick rebuild,” said Keia Clarke, Liberty’s general manager.
This is a stunning turnaround from 2017, when the Madison Square Garden Company announced it would sell the franchise and kicked the team out of its namesake venue.
The Liberty was sent to play the Westchester County Center, a tiny venue an hour from downtown Manhattan and light years away in prestige.
“We found ourselves in that moment,” said Clarke, who has been with the team for 14 years. “I would say it’s resilience”
The Liberty received a lifeline when Alibaba Group founder Joe Tsai and his wife Clara Wu Tsai bought the team two years later and later considered moving it to Brooklyn.
“We’ve reset the clock,” said general manager Jonathan Kolb, who was hired in 2019.
The team has adopted a “player first” philosophy, seeking out the best talent in the league and investing heavily in player performance.
“We consider our performance team to be the best in the WNBA. And our goal is really to be the best performance team in the sport,” Kolb said.
That approach paid off, as the team signed 2021 MVP Jonquel Jones, five-time All-Star Courtney Vandersloot and two-time Finals MVP Breanna Stewart as part of a series of dramatic moves ahead of the 2023 season.
Kolb said winning the title after five finals appearances would be a well-deserved reward for the fans who stuck around during the “nomadism” years.
“It would have been easy for them to abandon us at any time when we were moving around so much,” he said.
“It would mean everything
