Through the first month of the WNBA season, one thing was certain: the Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty were the title favorites and the rest of the league was just playing for third place.
But New York looks very, very vulnerable now, as the team has lost four of its past five games. With Jonquel Jones sidelined by an ankle injury, the team just hasn't looked the same.
Maybe, when all is said and done, New York will still be right there once the team gets healthy. However, this current slide has a chance to radically alter the team's path to a second consecutive championship. If New York can't get back to the two or three seed, the team could be looking at a semifinals matchup with the Lynx instead of a Finals matchup, something that would be a serious issue for the team.
So, what's wrong with the Liberty right now? What, aside from the Jones injury, is causing these issues? Let's go inside the team's current struggles.
Jonquel Jones' absence matters, but New York's struggles go beyond that
We can't ignore the impact that Jonquel Jones being out has, but this Liberty team should be built well enough to account for that. Losses are expected, but a team that still has Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Natasha Cloud shouldn't have a 1-4 stretch, no matter who the opponent is, even if all of those losses are to teams sitting second through fifth in the standings.
Look at the on/off numbers for Jones. With her on the floor, the Liberty look like an unbeatable juggernaut with a net rating of +29.94. This team is impossible to beat on both ends of the floor.
But when Jones is off the floor, that number plummets to +0.87, with the team getting significantly worse on both ends, especially defensively. That's a problem and while it speaks strongly to the idea that Jones is the most important player in New York right now, it also highlights something that could be an issue even once Jones is back: New York's other players are underperforming.
Breanna Stewart has completely lost her 3-point shot. After shooting under 30 percent from deep for the first time in 2024, many expected a bounce-back campaign from Stewie. Instead, she's shooting 21.6 percent from beyond the arc. With Jones out, that becomes magnified — Jones is a good shooter who can stretch the floor, but her replacement, Nyara Sabally, is a pretty paint-bound big. That kills a lot of the offensive versatility, putting more of the shooting responsibility on the guards.
And those guards are struggling. Ionescu is shooting 21.6 percent from the floor over the past five games. Her poor shooting stretch is as much to blame for these losses as anything else. With Jones off the floor, we know the Liberty defense takes a huge hit, but having scorers like Ionescu means that New York should still be able to outscore teams. That hasn't been the case, as Ionescu just can't see to buy a bucket.
As for her backcourt mate Natasha Cloud, the past five games have seen her shoot 26.3 percent from 3-point range. Again, more struggles from deep. Shooting should be an advantage of this roster, and while it isn't a disadvantage yet — even with these issues, the team ranks fifth in the league in 3-point percentage over the past five games — it's not pushing the Liberty forward as much as expected.
Leonie Fiebich being at EuroBasket has contributed to these struggles as well. Kennedy Burke has been a revelation off the bench, but Rebekah Gardner and Marine Johannès have struggled with consistency.
Things will get better for New York, but there are worrisome signs, even when the team gets back to full strength. Five WNBA teams have won 10 or more games this year — New York is 1-4 against those teams, and the lone win was by two possessions against Atlanta. We haven't even seen New York matched up against Minnesota yet, but unless something changes soon, it's probably not going to be a fun set of games to watch for Liberty fans.