With the FIBA Women’s World Cup beginning next month, the WNBA will be on a hiatus from August 31 to September 17. This means a much-needed rest for the players after a tough and chaotic regular season. However, the rest won’t be the same for all teams, as the main stars of the show will be heading to Berlin, Germany. WNBA legend Sue Bird recently concerned over this matter and picked the New York Liberty as the team to be the most affected by the World Cup.
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“Yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious. The New York Liberty will be the most impacted, given that they have seven players going. I’m like, ‘What are those five players that are sticking around? What’s Chris DeMarco gonna be doing with them?'” Bird said on NBC Sports’ WNBA Showtime.
Thankfully, the Liberty already booked their ticket to the playoffs before the start of the World Cup. It would have been a hassle for head coach Chris DeMarco not to overload his star players after the World Cup and before the playoffs in order to seek qualification. Regardless, he still faces roster management challenges as 6 of his 14-player squad will be playing for their nations.
As Sue Bird said, multiple key Liberty players will be travelling to Germany next week. MVP candidate Breanna Stewart (USA), Leonie Fiebich (Germany), Raquel Carrera (Spain), Pauline Astier (France), Marine Johannes (France), and Han Xu (China) won’t be there. Although Satou Sabally is not part of the squad because she pulled out to recover from a concussion, that means she may not be present for Liberty’s practice sessions either.
One look at the lineup makes you understand why the Liberty will be the most impacted. This is also because the Liberty houses the most foreign players in the WNBA, so naturally, they were more prone to facing such disadvantages. DeMarco will have to make a few hard decisions to maintain fitness after the World Cup is all said and done.
On the contrary, teams with only a few players heading to Germany will take full advantage of this time.
“And a lot of times during these two weeks when we have a break, there’s a lot of practice time. It’s time, you know, to tighten things up a little bit. So for the Mystics, a team that we’ve talked about a bunch that could make a playoff run, it might help them.” Sue Bird
“They’re gonna use some of that time as a mini camp.” Cheryl Miller added.
Sue Bird also pointed out that foreign players will be playing a lot more minutes than the coaches would want them to. Taking the example of the Liberty again, Breanna Stewart is on a USA roster that has stars in every position. So, her workload would not be as much as someone like Fiebich’s for Germany.
Talking about the tournament itself, Team USA is once again the heavy favorite to win it all, considering they have the likes of Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson, and Breanna Stewart, among other top players in the WNBA. Head coach Kara Lawson and co. kick off their World Cup campaign on September 4 against China.