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One of the more recent entrants into the New York Liberty’s expansive fanbase officially announced her retirement this week.
Allie Quigley had not played a WNBA game in three years but former sharpshooter officially announced her retirement this week in an essay penned on The Players’ Tribune. Quigley, who partook in 14 WNBA seasons—all but four with the Chicago Sky—never played a minute with the Liberty but was a mainstay at Barclays Center after her wife Courtney Vandersloot took the floor for the team in each of the last two full seasons.
“I was really young, so it was scary. I usually always had a guard her,” Sabrina Ionescu recalled with a smirk after the Liberty’s 85-66 victory over, ironically enough, the Sky. “Just such a great player … I’m so, so happy for her, and the career that she’s had as one of the best shooters that our league has ever seen.”
Ionescu has effectively taken the title of the WNBA’s three-point queen from Quigley. Her record-breaking output in the 2023 Three-Point Contest, for example, surpassed a prior record set by Quigley in the previous season. Both Ionescu and Quigley also rank in the WNBA’s top five in all-time free throw percentage.
But the Liberty franchise face still has some catching up to do when it comes to some of Quigley’s other marks: Quigley holds the All-Star Weekend record with four wins in the long distance shootout (no other player has more than one) and she’s one of only 21 players in Association history to sink at least 500 during the regular season. Quigley also has two Sixth Woman of the Year titles to her name as one of three, alongside DeWanna Bonner and Dearica Hamby, to win more than one.
One of Ionescu’s first postseason forays was ended by Quigley, as the Sky downed the Liberty in the opening round of the 2022 WNBA Playoffs. Quigley spoiled the first-ever WNBA postseason game at Barclays Center by scoring a team-best 15 points in a 90-72 closeout. One year prior, Quigley and Vandersloot helped guide Chicago to its first championship, which saw them take down a Phoenix Mercury group coached by current Liberty boss Sandy Brondello.
Ionescu would later come to appreciate Quigley’s presence in her career-closing hiatus, which helped her build chemistry with Vandersloot. The latter joined New York after that postseason showdown and would collaborate with Ionescu on the Liberty’s first postseason championship run last fall. Clad in Vandersloot’s Liberty jersey, Quigley celebrated with the team on the Barclays Center floor following the clinching win over the Minnesota Lynx.
“I think the relationship that I’ve been able to have with her off the court meant a lot to me,” Ionescu recalled. “She was always kind of giving me words of encouragement from when I did the Three-Point Contest to obviously being here in New York and just kind of talking me through what she obviously has experienced as a shooter in this league and continuing to help me.”
The young WNBA season has been an eventful span for Quigley and Vandersloot in both joyful and heartbreaking forms: the couple welcomed their first child, a girl named after Vandersloot’s late mother Jan, shortly after Vandersloot, who returned to Chicago through free agency, broke her wife’s Sky franchise scoring record.
Alas, Vandersloot won’t be back on the floor this season as she tore her ACL in last weekend’s loss to the Indiana Fever. The immediate aftermath of the injury prevented Vandersloot from returning to New York to receive the championship ring she earned last fall.
Brondello, who worked with Quigley during their shared time with the San Antonio Silver Stars, recalled prepping for the sharpshooting couple in its heyday, believing that the two are well equipped to handle what life has thrown at them in this rollercoaster journey.
“[Quigley] is a special shooter,” Brondello said. “You have to be strong and fast, but [if you have] IQ and are able to shoot, you’re going to find a place in the WNBA. That’s what she had. She was just so crafty. Her and Slooty used to have such a great chemistry, how they played together and created for each other.”
“Obviously she’s a new mother, and we’re so excited about that. It’s tough with Slooty, with the ACL, but I think starting this new journey in life will certainly overcome anything. I’m just so happy for them.”
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