The Athletic has live coverage of the WNBA Finals featuring the Las Vegas Aces vs. New York Liberty
In Super Squads, The Athletic follows the New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces in their quests to win a WNBA championship. Our reporters will tell the stories of the players on two of the most star-studded teams in league history and examine how their paths shape the future of the WNBA.
NEW YORK — Courtney Vandersloot recognizes that sooner than later her playing days will come to an end. “I’ve had a lot of miles,” she says. And she’s played a lot of minutes — more than 12,000 in her WNBA career, plus thousands more overseas and in college.
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Bumps and bruises have become expected for the 34-year-old New York Liberty guard. It’s why on a normal morning, Vandersloot tries to step foot in New York’s training room by 8:30 or 9 to do “maintenance,” she says, “basically just to keep this thing going.”
Call it maintenance or prehab, rehab or treatment; having access to the Liberty’s performance team was among the biggest selling points that Vandersloot was pitched as a free agent last offseason. As New York prepares to begin its semifinal series against the Connecticut Sun on Sunday afternoon, that access is one reason why Vandersloot joined the franchise in first place, and why the Liberty have had sustained success once gameplay began.
In recent years, organizations across the WNBA have demonstrated investment in a number of areas. Facilities have been a common place in which upgrades have occurred — like in Indiana, where the Fever recently unveiled a renovated locker room, practice gym and arena, or in Las Vegas, where the Aces are now practicing in a 64,000-square foot facility. Among the ways that Liberty team owners Clara Wu Tsai and Joe Tsai have helped improve their players’ experience has come by way of growing its performance staff. There is some variety as to what other WNBA performance staffs look like, but the Liberty’s is one of the largest — if not the largest — in the league. Eight full-time employees are on their performance team.
Jonathan Kolb, New York’s general manager, worked at the league office before joining the Liberty in 2019. While he was working for the WNBA league office most of the jobs on the Liberty’s current performance staff didn’t exist across franchises he observed. Trainers, he says, were sometimes just seasonal. Medical staff followed an athletic trainer-led model instead of a performance-team model. But as Kolb and the revamped New York front office started to make changes within the organization, they wanted to create a robust full-time staff, recognizing that treating players was imperative.
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In 2019, the Liberty went just 10-24, missing the playoffs for the second consecutive year. That season was Terri Acosta’s first with the franchise. Acosta, who had been an assistant trainer with the Detroit Shock in the mid 2000s, remembers working closely with Ohemaa Nyanin, then the team’s director of basketball operations, on whatever was needed. “We kind of filled a lot of different roles,” says Acosta, New York’s head athletic trainer.
Among them was that of a moving company: Acosta recalls countless afternoons in which she drove all the team’s equipment in her car about 30 miles through New York traffic from Brooklyn’s St. Joseph’s College, where morning shootarounds were occurring, to Westchester County Center for that night’s game.
Much has changed since then. Barclays Center is now the team’s home. And in its bowels are numerous offices, a recently overhauled locker room, a weight room and a training room, which has a yellow BELIEVE sign (a la Ted Lasso) above one of its doorways — all for the Liberty. Players, not surprisingly, cycle throughout the rooms, with their needs capable of being met at any time. “It’s a safe space,” Acosta says.
Assistant coach Zach O’Brien says that the Liberty coach staff works closely with the performance team. “We lean on them quite a bit,” O’Brien says. The medical group worked on plans for players to prepare for the season. They help shape daily practice schedules. “You try and gather as many little competitive advantages as possible,” Kolb says, “and I think that’s one of them.”
The Liberty’s performance staff and facilities have set the franchise apart as a selling point to players. (Ben Pickman / The Athletic)Because of the size of the performance group, players on the Liberty can obtain individual attention at almost all times. Reserve center Stefanie Dolson, for example, says she recognized it as a “luxury” that she could work so closely with physical therapist Joelle Muro while dealing with a right ankle injury.
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Past experiences of those on the performance staff vary. Sports medicine lead Kurtis Rayfield has worked with multiple NBA teams. Sports performance lead Lesley Chandler joined the Liberty after seven years at Northwestern University. Muro is in her second year with the team, having come from the NWSL. “I wanted to be part of an organization that’s putting their money where their mouth is truthfully,” she says.
Investment has come in the form of hires, but also in the use of technology. Kinexon player tracking helps understand player exertion levels and is important in mapping out return-to-play protocols, Kolb says. And regular post-practice force plate testing helps minimize injury risks, Chandler says, by gathering information about if a player is jumping as high or fast as before. The data is then used to make more informed training decisions. “Just because we have all this stuff, they don’t have to use it, but they definitely do,” Muro says of how the coaches use the information with which they’re presented.
Nutrition is another key to player well-being. Mary Ellen Kelly, the Liberty’s dietician, works closely with the team’s operation staff to set menus and, among other tasks, develop individual nutrition strategies for players. Multiple players tout their access to meals, specifically breakfast, and smoothies are prepared for them to grab as they walk out of every practice.
Such resources, though, aren’t just available during the season. As Chandler notes, “the offseason is huge,” and performance team members are accessible to those in-market year round. Plus, Kolb says he could foresee sending someone overseas if a player abroad seeks assistance. Doing so could make complicated health situations easier to confront.
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As free agents take calls from the Liberty and weigh where to play next — some from those faraway places — the topic of New York’s performance team is bound to come up. “They use it as a selling point, as they should,” Dolson says, “because it is not like any other team that I’ve been a part of.”
Says Muro: “We’re really doing something special and we’re truly a part of making a difference. I think that’s why we’re all here.”
The Super Squads series is part of a partnership with Google Lens. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photo of Joelle Muro, left, and Jocelyn Willoughby: Courtesy of Brandon Todd / New York Liberty)
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