Why this offseason was different than any other
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The New York Liberty are building a superteam in Brooklyn.
The Liberty acquired former MVP Jonquel Jones in a three-team trade earlier this week while carving out enough cap space to make a max offer to another superstar — their longtime rumored target is Breanna Stewart, the 28-year-old former MVP who hails from Syracuse — when free agency begins on Saturday.
And All-Star guard Sabrina Ionescu is feeling as healthy and energized as she has since she joined the Liberty as the No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft.
A Big 3 of Jones, Stewart and Ionescu would transform the Liberty into an automatic title contender in hopes of hanging the franchise’s first championship banner.
“It’s my first offseason not rehabbing, and I could say it’s the first offseason that I’ve been able to kind of map out and know exactly what it’s going to look like and not have any obstacles of surgery procedures, you know, whatever that looks like,” Ionescu recently told The Post while at the American Express x NBA 2K23 Gaming Lab event in New York City, before the Jones trade. “And so it’s been exciting. … And now getting back to training and so super excited, just hit the ground running.”
Ionescu suffered a Grade 3 left ankle sprain in her third career WNBA game and missed the rest of the COVID-19 “wubble” season. The Oregon product underwent ankle surgery in Nov. 2020, and effects from the injury lingered into her 2021 campaign and the following offseason. Ionescu’s injury and recovery tested her patience. She later told Boardroom’s Rich Kleiman that she rushed herself back to the court following the ankle surgery.
“The first like two years of playing professionally weren’t really what I thought they would be particularly just playing, you know, going in a bubble, getting drafted in the middle of a pandemic,” Ionescu said. “But last season’s kind of felt like the first season as everything being back to normal, us having a really good fan base in New York and, you know, being able to play at Barclays.”
A “normal” season is one way to describe it. Others might say Ionescu had herself a breakout year in 2022, when she averaged 17.4 points, 7.1 rebounds and 6.3 assists, earning her first All-Star nod and an All-WNBA Second Team selection.
Ionescu also became the first-ever WNBA player to accrue over 500 points, 200-plus rebounds and 200-plus assists in a single season and the first to record a 30-point triple-double, when she posted 31 points, 13 rebounds, and 10 assists in a win over the Aces in July.
In October, Ionescu won a gold medal with Team USA at the FIBA Women’s World Cup in Australia. Following her return home, Ionescu took some much-deserved time off, and enjoyed some of her favorite off-court activities.
“Obviously, I took a little bit of time off after the World Cup and let my body rest and heal,” Ionescu said. “I think I’ve traveled a little bit more and honestly just devoted a little bit more time towards things outside of basketball — spending time with family, being able to go home and continue to work out and do other things. … But I think just not having the pressure of knowing that I have to rehab or I have to train or else I’m not going to become healthy is, I think, just something that I don’t have to worry about.
“I’ve been doing a lot of yoga, hot yoga and pilates, which has been really fun. … I love swimming and biking. I walked for the first time as well because I wasn’t able to do that in my free time [while rehabbing]. Just being able to get back to like daily-life activity and not dealing with stress has been something that I’ve been able to do this offseason.”
As she prepares for her fourth WNBA season, Ionescu is also focusing on her various business ventures.
In November, she made the Forbes 30 Under 30 List 2022 in the sports category, which acknowledged her long list of endorsements and investments in Buzzer Media and Nex. Additionally, she works closely with Kevin Durant as an ambassador for Boardroom and a strategic partner with Durant’s and Kleiman’s Thirty Five Ventures.
Ionescu has also taken on a part-time job at her alma mater with the Oregon women’s basketball team as the director of athletic culture. In her role, Ionescu will help with the development of student-athletes and cultivate head coach Kelly Graves’ five pillars of Oregon women’s basketball: passion, integrity, unity, thankfulness and servanthood.
“It’s really more of a mentorship-type opportunity,” Ionescu said. “I’m really close to the coaching staff. There’s the university, obviously the team. And so I wanted to just continue to find ways to give back.
“I’ve been able to go back and talk to the team, talk to the players, and kind of just, you know, be there as a resource for them for whatever they need. It hasn’t been too much for now. … But I think just having the opportunity to just be a soundboard or be whatever the players need is really what I was looking for from this opportunity.”
The Post spoke with Ionescu on the day WNBA champion Brittney Griner was freed from Russia in a prisoner exchange for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner, a member of the Phoenix Mercury, was detained for nearly 10 months in Russia after she was arrested on drug smuggling charges at an airport in the Moscow region in February.
The WNBA and its players, including Ionescu, campaigned for her release with public pleas and calls to action.
“I think it speaks a lot about, just the fact that every single team in the league, every single player, organization stood behind and really did everything that we could to use our voice and platform to bring awareness and just educate and bring it home,” Ionescu said.
“She’s been there for a long time. And I don’t know a lot of players and leagues would continue to keep her at the forefront of what they were trying to accomplish. So I think it speaks volumes about what we stand for and just the family that we have in the WNBA.”
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