Liberty's optimism shines as they enter playoffs against Phoenix

For two hours, Sandy Brondello sat and watched and evaluated.

What transpired directly in front of her reinforced what she believed to be true.

And so, when Brondello and Jonquel Jones and Emma Meesseman met with reporters at Barclays Center on Tuesday night a few minutes after the Liberty’s 75-66 rout of the Mystics, the coach was optimistic about her team’s prospects in the upcoming WNBA playoffs.

“We can be really dangerous,” Brondello said. “I’m really confident. I think the players are really confident just to have our full group back. Hopefully we’ll just go out there and play our best basketball and anyone can beat anyone right now, so we’re going to be confident in what we do.”

The defending WNBA champion Liberty enter the playoffs as the fifth seed after a regular season in which they went 27-17. They will open the best-of-three series against fourth-seeded Phoenix on Sunday at PHX Arena.

The Liberty lost three of four regular-season meetings with the Mercury (27-17), but as Brondello pointed out before the regular season-ending 91-86 win over the Sky in Chicago on Thursday night, the Mercury did not play the current iteration of the Liberty.

“I suppose they don’t have as much film on us in that regard,” she said with a chuckle. “Phoenix hasn’t seen us at full strength. We won one and lost three, and some of those games we did not look very good at all with some of our main players out.”

The unavailability of core components has been one of the primary themes of the Liberty’s 2025 season. They were forced to use 18 different starting lineups because of injuries. The regular starting lineup of Jones, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, Natasha Cloud and Leonie Fiebich was limited to 12 games.

“In terms of the starting lineup, it’s been a tough season for us [with] the injuries and all that,” Jones said after her 12-point, 11-rebound effort against the Mystics.

That is a bit of an understatement.

When the unit was intact, the Liberty were 12-0. When it was not, they went 15-17.

Moreover, because of the injuries, Brondello and her coaching staff were unable to settle upon playoff rotations. Instead, they were forced to use the final two games of the regular season — wins over Washington and Chicago — to determine player personnel deployment.

Certainly, it was not ideal for anyone associated with the Liberty to be limited to 80 minutes spanning two games to determine rotations. But as Jones pointed out, there are reasons to be confident entering Game 1 based upon what transpired against the Mystics and the Sky.

“I think it’s good just for us to be able to look at not just the starting five but our entire team, and see that we have juggernauts coming off the bench,” Jones said.

The nominal starting five was outscored 52-48 and 61-42 in the wins over Washington and Chicago, respectively. But a bright spot was the play of the reserves in both wins.

Specifically, Meesseman.

Meesseman, whose signing was announced on Aug. 1, scored 19 points in 19:47 against the Mystics and finished with 14 points, six rebounds, three assists, one steal and one block in 16 minutes in Chicago.

In the 17 games the 2019 WNBA Finals MVP has played with the Liberty, Meesseman is averaging 13.4 points and 5.1 rebounds in 26.4 minutes.

“Having Emma is amazing,” Jones said. “I had the pleasure of playing with her overseas for a number of years and so I know that she’s not just a great player but a great person and she puts the team first. It’s amazing that we have the opportunity to have her here and be a part of this.

“We all know that she’s not a bench player, but she’s willing to do that for our team and it makes us stronger. It allows us to . . . half-court is where we start to have a little lull and she can come into the game and change things so quickly for us. We understand that she’s amazing and that we’re happy to see her in a New York Liberty jersey.”