The New York Liberty are doing something that makes people deeply uncomfortable: they are looking ordinary in a season that was supposed to be about being extraordinary. That is the danger of judging a reigning contender in July or August. It is messy, it is frustrating and, if history is any guide, it is not always fatal.
In the WNBA's 12-team era from 2009 to 2024, only two champions were not the top seed in the regular season or within at most two games of the league's best record. Indiana in 2012 was one exception. Chicago in 2021 was the other. That is the backdrop for every conversation about the Liberty right now: yes, they have looked off. Yes, they have been far too inconsistent. But recent champions have also shown that the regular season is not always the final word.
The Liberty problem is real, but it is not the end of the story
Last season, the Las Vegas Aces finished with a plus-3.9 net rating and ended the year on a 16-game winning streak. That is what clean, ruthless form looks like when a team knows exactly who it is. The Liberty, by contrast, are not producing that kind of week-to-week authority. They are being forced into the awkward position of proving that a title-level team can still arrive late rather than early.
That is why they sit in the same conversation as Las Vegas and New York usually do when the stakes rise: not as teams chasing a nice regular-season story, but as sides expected to matter when the calendar gets serious. The issue is that New York have not yet made that expectation feel automatic. They are still searching for the sort of rhythm that turns a good team into a terrifying one.
The broader league picture only sharpens the point. In 2025, the league added another team and four more regular-season games. In 2026, the WNBA expanded twice more, even though the schedule did not get any longer. More teams, more noise, more room for volatility. By 2027, there are even more games on the horizon. That matters because the regular season is getting harder to read, not easier.
Look at the contrast. Dallas and Golden State have been the kind of teams that can build a clean early-season case for themselves. New York and Las Vegas, meanwhile, carry the burden of proven playoff history. That is supposed to count for something. It usually does. And if the Liberty are going to justify their place near the top of the conversation, they do not need to be perfect now. They just need to avoid drifting too far away from the level they know they can still reach.
There is also a reason to be cautious about reading too much into the rough patches. The league has already seen enough evidence that the best teams are not always the most polished teams in midseason. The Valkyries were on a nine-game winning streak in 2026 and had a defensive rating of 93.7 points allowed per 100 possessions, which is exactly the kind of number that reminds you how quickly momentum can change the conversation. A team can look flat one month and locked in the next.
So yes, the Liberty are flailing a little. That is the uncomfortable truth. But the larger truth is that champions, and near-champions, are often granted the space to be imperfect because they have already shown what they can become. Jonquel Jones and the rest of this group do not need to win the regular-season argument. They need to remain dangerous enough that nobody will want to face them when it matters most. That is still the real test.
And that is why the Liberty should not be written off, only warned. The regular season is a referendum on form. The playoffs are a referendum on nerve. New York still has a chance to turn this into a familiar story: another contender looking shaky before suddenly becoming a problem for everyone else.
