LIBERTY FOR ALL

BREANNA STEWART, JONQUEL JONES AND COURTNEY VANDERSLOOT MADE A PLAN TO PLAY TOGETHER (YES, THERE WAS A GROUP TEXT) AND PULLED IT OFF. NOW NEW YORK BOASTS THE WNBA'S best-ever collection of talent. THE ONLY REMAINING QUESTION: CAN THEY TORCH THE REST OF THE LEAGUE?

- HOWARD MEGDAL

JONQUEL JONES, a new member of the Liberty, was finishing her workout at the team's practice facility at Barclays Center in late January when she saw assistant GM Ohemaa Nyanin's eyes go wide. Courtney Vandersloot had announced over Twitter and Instagram that she'd be joining Jones and Breanna Stewart, the team's other marquee offseason acquisition, in New York.

"I just started screaming and going crazy in the gym," Jones says. "Just going super, super crazy and just being super excited about everything."

The creation of a superteam in Brooklyn did not happen by chance. The Liberty had planned carefully for months, if not years, a vision scribbled on whiteboards in the back offices of Barclays Center by general manager Jonathan Kolb and coach Sandy Brondello.

The players had been no less careful in their planning, conspiring for months in a group text to find a way to play together and hashing over the implications in intimate family conversations in Seattle, the Chicago suburbs and Connecticut. Even still, dozens of small moments had to tip the right way for them to all wind up together.

The end result: Three of the top 10 players in the WNBA in win shares since 2016 are now on the same roster, one that made the playoffs last season without any of them. The biggest stars on that team-'20 No. 1 pick Sabrina Ionescu and All-Star guard Betnijah Laney-are still there, too, alongside an impressive collection of young talent designed to help New York maximize its new core for years to come.

Now, the Liberty loom as the greatest collection of talent ever assembled on a WNBA team, with a legitimate chance to bring a pro basketball title home to New York for the first time since the Knicks in 1973.

And the league, just a few years after wondering whether it would have a team in New York at all, has a jewel in its largest media market as it prepares to negotiate its next television contract.