– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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NEW YORK — Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones were just like every other New York City area residents on Saturday night while taking in the Knicks winning their first NBA championship in 53 years, and yet their experiences could have been any more different.
“I was in my house last night. It was just fireworks going off until who knows when,” said Stewart, the family woman, after the Liberty’s win over the Washington Mystics about how she spent the historic basketball night in New York sports.
Jones not only heard those fireworks, but maybe set some off, perhaps?
“I was outside,” said a sheepish Jones, willfully admitting in the process that curfew might not have been the biggest thing on her mind the night before an afternoon game she was going to participate in.
Yet Stewart and Jones inherently know more than anyone else in the Big Apple what the newly-crowned NBA champions have been feeling over the course of the Knickerbockers’ championship run 53 years in the making. The All-Star duo came to New York in 2023 to do what Jalen Brunson just accomplished, and what his task was when coming to New York one year prior to Stewart and Jones: bring the city a long-awaited championship.
While the Knicks at least had championships in their history, the Liberty were the ones who finally delivered the city its first championship in a generation in 2024, and in doing so providing the franchise and WNBA charter member its maiden title after 28 years. Unlike the Knicks’ acquisition of Brunson, which came with more scrutiny than an expectation of a title, the unification of former WNBA MVPs Stewart and Jones, along with point guard Courtney VanderSloot, meant the Liberty pushed all the chips in the middle of the table for a championship. But it was Stewart, like Brunson, who had the brightest spotlight shone on her, and she and the Liberty handled the intense heat with aplomb and earned that first-ever title after a WNBA Finals win over the Minnesota Lynx that went the distance.
“Really happy for Jalen. I think that just the way that he kind of closed it out, he was literally gonna do whatever he could to really finish the series last night,” Stewart said. “But he said something in the in the postgame where he was like, he came to New York to to win a championship, and [it was] very similar sentiments to to when JJ and I came to New York. In our case, be the first ones to bring the championship to the Liberty. And, yeah, people want to do it. Like they take pride in doing something that hasn’t been done in a long time or hasn’t been done at all. And I’m really happy.”
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Friday evening’s game, with photos taken by staff photographer Chris Gonzalez. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page. Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 33 pictures in total.
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