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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. One New York basketball team can still win it all this season. It's the WNBA's New York Liberty. Though they lost 86-82 to the Chicago Sky yesterday after leading by as many as 19 in that game, there's a feeling about the Liberty this season. In the offseason, the team made significant improvements to their training facilities, and they signed three of the league's best players. Three. We may be looking at the WNBAs for a super team and as you follow the male professional sports teams in New York, it could be that the Liberty is the best professional sports team in New York in the context of their league.

With me to talk about the hopes and excitement surrounding the Liberty season and to try to give you a little primer on, yes, women's pro basketball is a thing if you haven't been following it, and we probably have the best team right here in New York, we have Maitreyi Anantharaman, cofounder and staff writer at Defector, the sports and culture news website. Maitreyi, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Maitreyi Anantharaman: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go right to some of these boldface names who more people could know about. The Liberty signed two former league MVPs in the offseason, Breanna Stewart, and Jonquel Jones, and a four-time all-star guard, that's Courtney Vandersloot. They all join a team that already has a number one overall draft pick in Sabrina Ionescu. How did they pull off such a spectacular off-season staffing ramp?

Maitreyi Anantharaman: Well, I think it has a lot to do with a change in ownership that was made back in 2019. The Liberty are one of the oldest WNBA franchises. They played in the first WNBA game in 1997. They won the first WNBA game in 1997, and yet of the original teams, they're the only one without a championship. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that when the team was owned by James Dolan, he put it up for sale in 2017, it just wasn't a priority for him. We think of New York in any sport as an exciting free-agent destination and the Liberty weren't, they were itinerant. They played it mostly at MSG, but they would end up being shuttled around from arena to arena when it was under construction.

The last two years of the Dolan era, they played their home games in White Plains in like a rec center. That very quickly changed when Brooklyn Net's owner, Joe Tsai, bought the team. He kept it in New York, which was no guarantee when it went up for sale and really just started to take some interest in it.

Breanna Stewart, their big, big offseason acquisition, said he and his wife were very involved in the free agent recruitment process, that the team wined and dined her. She plays in Turkey in the offseason and so they flew to Istanbul to meet her. They took her on a little cruise of the Bosphorus Strait.

The way the WNBA is set up, it's a pretty restrictive salary structure. There's a hard cap. In the last collective bargaining agreement, the salaries went up, but the cap didn't really to the same degree. That means that teams can't give players huge contracts, but they can do things like this, flying out to meet with the free agent's family, investing in swanky facilities, putting more money in training, nutrition programs, and things like that. That's the story of the Liberty's offseason and why they were able to attract those great players.

Brian Lehrer: It's really interesting what you say about the great players wanting to be here. It really is a contrast with the male professional sports team that plays at Madison Square Garden, either because of the Dolan's ownership, or other aspects of Knicks dysfunction for decades now. Some of the best players when they become free agents, they don't want to come here and that's hurt the Knicks in their ability to regrow a championship team for them. Here's a clip of Breanna Stewart, one of those new signings, maybe the best of them, on ESPN talking about why she wanted to join this project.

Breanna Stewart: I decided to go to New York because I want to continue to be great. I want to go to the place where I can continue to help this league become better to continue to raise the standard, and I feel like why not go to the biggest market in all of sports. I'm really excited to go after their first championship.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, we want to invite you into this conversation. Are you watching the Liberty this season? Do you want to promote the team and say, "Look, for those of you who like basketball and maybe watch the Knicks and the Nets, and maybe watch some male college basketball, this is real and this is really fun0?" Who wants to promote Liberty fandom by putting it in your own words? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can also text to that number for Maitreyi Anantharaman, cofounder and staff writer at Defector, the sports and culture news website. Maitreyi, how have they done these opening weeks?

Maitreyi Anantharaman: They're foreign too right now, as you said, they played a pretty disappointing game yesterday, blew a 19-point lead, I think they were up 17 at the half and ended up losing. I would say so far, they've looked like what they are, which is a team of really talented players who don't have a ton of experience playing with each other. That was always going to be their issue in the first few weeks of the season. Everyone entering the season said, "This is a two-horse race between the Liberty and the reigning champion, Las Vegas Aces," who are, I would say, the other big super team in the league right now. The Aces are undefeated so far. They're six [unintelligible 00:06:17].

They've had a slightly easier schedule but they're also a team that was mostly built through the draft. Their core has three, four or five years experience with each other, which is something the Liberty do not, and it shows. They're very talented but they're turning the ball over a lot. You'll see some miscommunications on defense. I'm not shocked that they look like this to start the season.

There's another pro-basketball team that Joe Tsai owns that played in the Barclay Center that tells you it's easy to assemble the on-paper super team, and sometimes a little harder to actually win with one. That's why you play the games. I don't think there's any weird net-style psychodrama going on here. It's a work in progress and I think in a few weeks, the kinks will be ironed out and they should really get rolling.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, right. Who is the more accursed male team to be under the same roof as the Knicks or the Nets? I guess we could do a whole segment on that, right? There's been some controversy around the Liberty and it gets at the inequity that exists in the gulf between the NBA and the WNBA. The Liberty were fined $500,000 for chartering flights, private flights for the team, to games last year, something NBA players do week in and week out without incident. Explain this. Explain it to me because I really don't get it, and explain it to our listeners.

Maitreyi Anantharaman: WNBA players fly commercial flights to their road games, which has been a point of frustration for many of them. It's in the collective bargaining agreement that they have to fly commercial flights. There are some exceptions for certain playoff games now. Your average Joe, certainly I feel pretty crummy and achy after a commercial flight. I'm 5'4 and I don't have to play basketball game a few hours after I get off a plane. It's really tough for taller players. A lot of them complain about the travel delays also and getting into town in weird hours and then having to play on little sleep.

In 2021, Joe Tsai paid for the Liberty to take private flights. He did it in secret until someone in the league office was looking over some itineraries and thinking, "Something's not adding up here." The team was fined $500,000 because it is a violation of the CBA. It was the biggest fine in WNBA history, though I tend to think it was probably a pretty good investment for Joe Tsai because since then he's had a lot of nice press. He's like a women's rights martyr.

Breanna Stewart said that when she was considering where to sign, she asked different teams, "What's your ownerships stance on maybe pushing the league to allow charter planes?" Here's an example he could point to immediately of, "Yes, I'm going to fight for this."

Brian Lehrer: Why would that be in the collective bargaining agreement that teams cannot charter flights and they have to fly commercial?

Maitreyi Anantharaman: It's just a matter of differences in ownership wealth. The fear is that certain owners will be able to afford charter planes, certain owners wouldn't, and then it would be unfair to the owners who wouldn't in getting free agents and attracting players. It's something that the players are really pushing against. There's a whole faction of ownership. Joe Tsai, Mark Davis in Las Vegas, Mat Ishbia who just bought the Phoenix Mercury in Phoenix Suns, is advocating for a change, but it seems like there's a majority of ownership that does not want that. The League is looking into it, but it's certainly a hot issue right now.

Brian Lehrer: Sydney in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sydney. Thanks for calling in.

Sydney: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I just want to say I am a new fan to both the WNBA and the NBA. I've been a longtime basketball player, but oddly, really the first time watching it, and I fell in love watching it because of the game mechanics, and the game theory behind it. Two more points for me is really, this has been a great avenue to build a community around and be able to go during the summer with different groups of friends.

Then lastly, I've been wanting to support the league and raise awareness for women's sports. By showing up, both from a marketing standpoint and then also just putting my money in, paying for the tickets, paying for all the things just to support the league and support everyone's efforts. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Sydney, is there anything you would say as a new fan, but a longtime player, about how to watch women's basketball and get into it, and whether it needs to be different in any way from how people would watch the man in the NBA, or is that not a thing?

Sydney: Yes, that's a really good question. I've heard this a lot, and of course, there's arguments about athleticism or biology, et cetera. I think what the NBA has is actually marketing power. It's a big marketing machine. When I'm looking at the WNBA, I'm not really looking at it from a marketing standpoint or showmanship standpoint. I'm looking at the core fundamentals game mechanics, and really just bonding with my friends. When I'm watching the NBA, it's a different type of fandom. It's a different type of core group set of people that I watch with, but when it comes to the WNBA, it's usually my friends who have played for a long time and we're really looking at it from a core fundamentals and just love for the sport because we're going to go play and shoot hoops on the weekend as well.

Brian Lehrer: Sydney, thank you very much. Maitreyi Anantharaman, cofounder and staff writer at Defector, the sports and culture news website. Same question for you, if I might ask. If there are. let's say fans of the NBA listening right now, and they're probably mostly guys and they think, "Well, yes, WNBA, I don't know. Maybe it's not the same level." Do they have to watch it differently in some way, or is that the wrong question?

Maitreyi Anantharaman: Yes, I don't really think so. I've always kind of reject that framing. I'm a huge NBA fan. I'm a huge WNBA fan. I think it's just good basketball. I think the players and the Liberty are just exciting to watch. They're just a great offensive team. They lead the WNBA in assisted shot rate, so you're going to see great passing, great ball movement. It's just fun. I think any connoisseur of basketball is going to enjoy it. I'm not some kind of misaddressed who hates men's basketball. I love watching NBA basketball. A lot of NBA players like watching WNBA basketball and appreciate it. I don't really see much of a division or a separation. I don't think you have to watch it with some different lens. I think you can just enjoy it for what it is.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I was lucky enough to live in Norfolk, Virginia, way back in the Nancy Lieberman era at Old Dominion, and got into it as a fan going to the games. A thing that people who I know say about the NBA, people who are turned off to the NBA, say it's become so much about the three-point shooting that there isn't as much passing as there used to be in the game there. There aren't as many plays. There aren't as many situations to watch, as opposed to just good shooters trying to shoot the ball and hit their threes. Would you say there's less of that in the WNBA? It's my impression that there is, but maybe I'm just seeing it.

Maitreyi Anantharaman: Yes, I think there's a little bit less. I think you'll see a little bit more like post-play than five-out offenses. Though I think the WNBA is maybe moving that way. I think there are some great old-school post players in the WNBA if you're into that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get Victoria in Brooklyn with a last word from a fan. Victoria, we've got about 30 seconds for you. Hi.

Victoria: Hi. I just wanted to say that I took my daughter who's 10 today for her first Liberty game yesterday. She started playing basketball last year. It was mesmerizing. It was such a great game until they started losing, but it was really inspiring and great for her to watch women. She's one of three girls I have.

Brian Lehrer: Whoops, I think that caller just dropped off. Maitreyi, you're still there.

Maitreyi Anantharaman: Yes, I am.

Brian Lehrer: We'll say goodbye because we're just about out of time, but when's the next game?

Maitreyi Anantharaman: I think they play on Wednesday and then they're on the road and then come back the next week for a little homestand.

Brian Lehrer: Maitreyi MAnantharaman, cofounder and staff writer at Defector, the sports and culture news website. Thanks for coming on and talking with some Liberty with us.

Maitreyi Anantharaman: Thanks so much.

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