NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Liberty have fired coach Chris DeMarco after only one season, the franchise announced Tuesday.
DeMarco came to New York in December after serving for more than a decade as an assistant with the Golden State Warriors. He had no prior WNBA experience before guiding the Liberty to the eighth seed in the regular season. After an impressive first-round playoff sweep over the top-seeded Minnesota Lynx, the Liberty were ousted by the Atlanta Dream in three games.
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The Liberty coaching staff made a crucial mistake in Game 2 of the series not knowing that they had a reset timeout left in overtime with the team trailing by three late in that game.
Now New York will be looking for its third coach in three seasons. General Manager Jonathan Kolb didn't retain Sandy Brondello after the 2025 season.
ESPN first reported DeMarco's departure.
After the final loss to Atlanta, none of the Liberty’s three star players — Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones — offered a definitive vote of confidence of DeMarco.
“Of course, we want to win a championship every single time we step on the court, but it’s really hard in this league, and in order to do that, you need to be consistent for the full 44 games,” Stewart said when asked about DeMarco. “And I don’t think we were consistent throughout the season. I think that we started to show some life and peak a little bit towards the end and in the playoffs. But this is not like cramming for a test. You got to be ready and ready to go since the jump.”
Ionescu said DeMarco’s future was “not our decision.”
“We’re thankful for everything that he’s done this year,” Ionescu said. “Just focusing on the now, the way he’s poured into us and stayed positive, level-headed through the ups and downs of this season as well that didn’t go the way that he wanted either.”
DeMarco was under contract for next season. Now Kolb will lead his fourth coaching search since 2019.
New York had a disappointing regular season two years removed from winning the WNBA title. The Liberty finished eighth with a 26-18 record.
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