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The Liberty will have a new leader on their bench for the third season in a row.
New York will not retain Chris DeMarco as head coach, according to ESPN. DeMarco, who led the Liberty to a 26–18 record and the No. 8 seed, was hired in December after more than a decade as an assistant coach with the NBA’s Warriors. ESPN reported last year that DeMarco had signed a multi-year deal.
The Liberty upset the No. 1 seed Lynx in the first round, but were swept by the Dream in the semifinals. They also won the Commissioner’s Cup in June.
New York’s decision means they will have to hire their third head coach in three years, after they fired Sandy Brondello last September. Brondello, who is now the head coach of the Tempo, led the Liberty to the franchise’s first WNBA title in 2024.
Brondello was fired soon after the team lost in the first round of the playoffs in 2025. After she was let go, she said that she also it was “just time” and that she “probably couldn’t have done it” had she been told to stick around for a fifth season.
“I just felt that it probably wasn’t the right fit anymore, to be quite honest,” Brondello said last year.
The next Liberty head coach will inherit three stars—Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, and Sabrina Ionescu—all under contract. The question will be whether the aging core of the title team (only Ionescu, 28, is under 30 years old) can still get over the hump.
New York also has to fill the rest of the roster around them. They only have six players under contract for next season with $3 million in cap space, per Spotrac.
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