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Sabrina Ionescu has made herself a home with the New York Liberty but she’s become quite familiar to another team as well.
The metropolitan point guard was one of 10 women named to the All-WNBA team this week, landing second-team honors alongside Aliyah Boston (Indiana), Paige Bueckers (Dallas), Nneka Ogwumike (Seattle) and Jackie Young (Las Vegas).
It’s the fourth consecutive All-WNBA invite for Ionescu, the homegrown face the of the Liberty franchise who just wrapped up her fifth full season in New York. The nomination is historic in Liberty circles, as she becomes the third New Yorker to reach four straight All-WNBA teams alongside Tina Charles and Teresa Weatherspoon. New York has also had at least one rep on each of the last four All-WNBA teams.
Though the Liberty’s quest to successfully defend the first postseason championship in franchise history fell short, Ionescu ranked in the top 10 in both points (18.2, tying her full season career-high from last year) and assists (5.7) per game while pulling in 4.9 rebounds and 1.3 steals in 38 games. Those takeaways were another personal best while she picked up the slack for the lengthy injury absences of fellow cornerstones Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart.
Over the summer, Ionescu became the second woman in WNBA history to earn multiple crowns at the Three-Point Contest at All-Star Weekend, joining Allie Quigley with her triumph in Indianapolis. Though she lacked her usual triple touch at some points of the season, she shot 49.3 percent from two-point range, another full-season career best.
Though Ionescu, like almost all of her Liberty teammates, is set to be a free agent as the league prepares to negotiate for a new collective bargainning agreement this offseason, she strongly hinted at returning to New York after the team’s postseason journey ended in Phoenix last month.
“I think we all know that the team never looks the same every single year,” Ionescu said. “But I think we understand [who] our core, our core players, the players who are committed to wanting to be here and through the good and the bad [are]. You can’t just want to be a part of it when you’re on top and enjoying a parade and popping champagne bottles, you have to be able to continue to commit and want to be the best for this organization.”
“I’m excited for next year. I think we’re going to use this to continue to motivate us. I think you’ve got to cherish those years where everything seems to be going well, where you’re healthy, you got the players out there, and this year just wasn’t our year with that. That’s something out of our control. We can see that tonight, knowing we did everything we could with the opportunities that we had, it just didn’t fall our way with injuries [this year].”
Leading the way on the first team were Napheesa Collier (Minnesota) and newly-recrowned MVP A’ja Wilson (Las Vegas), both of who were elected unanimously. Alyssa Thomas (Phoenix) fell one vote short of joining them while Allisha Gray (Atlanta) and Kelsey Mitchell (Indiana) rounded out the list.
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