The New York Liberty looked like they were going to cruise through this season. The team started the year 9-0 and looked like it had the best roster in the WNBA. But nothing can ever be that easy, and sure enough, New York has now hit a snag.
Former WNBA MVP Jonquel Jones, a strong early contender for Defensive Player of the Year, has suffered a right ankle sprain and will miss four to six weeks because of the injury.
New York is still obviously a talented team. Any team fronted by perennial MVP candidate Breanna Stewart is going to be mostly fine. But the race for the No. 1 seed with the Minnesota Lynx is a tight one, and New York can't afford to lose too many games with Jones sidelined.
Here are three Liberty players who will need to step up in Jones' absence.
1. Nyara Sabally
Luckily for the Liberty, the team has a starting-caliber big on its bench in Nyara Sabally who it can insert into the starting five. That doesn't mean there won't be a drop-off, though.
Sabally has provided the Liberty with efficient scoring in the paint in her limited WNBA opportunities. In six games this year — including three starts — Sabally has shot 75.0 percent in the restricted area, good for 12th-best in the WNBA. She's also been good defensively in those minutes, ranking third in the league in steal rate and 15th in block rate. Those are very encouraging things!
There are two main concerns, though. First is whether Sabally can maintain her effectiveness in a higher-usage role. It's not always easy to keep up the efficient scoring when you're on the floor more, and her relatively high foul rate could lead to her being less aggressive when going for steals and blocks on the other end.
There's also the issue of versatility. Part of what makes Jones so good is that she can score from everywhere; she's shooting 43.8 percent from 3-point range, while Sabally is shooting 0.0 percent from 3-point range. That could definitely be an issue.
2. Isabelle Harrison
With Sabally set to slide into the starting unit, Isabelle Harrison should see minutes now as the backup five. The veteran big doesn't need to have some kind of career renaissance all of a sudden, but she does have to prove she isn't a liability at this point in her career.
Harrison has played in 11 games for New York this season but is averaging just 8.1 minutes per game. It's hard to really extrapolate much considering her small role, but she seemed to be a bit of a mixed bag in the three games where she played double-digit minutes. In the first one, Harrison had an efficient scoring night. In the second, the efficiency dropped, but she still scored seven points. In the last one, she didn't make any of her shots.
Last year in Chicago, Harrison was one of the WNBA's least-efficient scorers, ranking 112th in points per scoring attempt and 111th in effective field goal percentage. If that doesn't improve, New York will be in trouble when Sabally goes to the bench and the team has to bring Harrison off the bench.
3. Sabrina Ionescu
Sabrina Ionescu doesn't play in the frontcourt, but she'll need to step up as the team's secondary scoring option with Jones sidelined. For the Liberty to succeed, we need to see Ionescu at her best.
Because we saw after Jones went down against the Mercury what happens when Ionescu isn't shooting well. The former Oregon star was just 3-for-16 from the floor in the loss and turned the ball over five times.
Ionescu shot 44.8 percent from deep in her breakout 2023 campaign, but that dropped to 33.2 percent last year and sits just slightly behind that mark at 33.0 percent this season. If the Liberty are going to win with Jones sidelined, Ionescu has to find a way to improve her scoring efficiency. Playing beside a point guard as good as Natasha Cloud should have done just that, but it hasn't been the case from deep, though Ionescu is having her best season ever inside the 3-point line.