Three days after crowning its 2026 champion, the WNBA was back in the news. Chris DeMarco will not be retained as head coach of the New York Liberty, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
The Liberty will have a third head coach in as many years; the franchise previously moved on from Sandy Brondello in September 2025, one season removed from New York winning its first WNBA title.
"We need to nail this," Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb said at the time, two months before hiring DeMarco. "If we're going to make a bold decision like this, our players deserve to get the best, and so we'll take the time necessary."
DeMarco came to Brooklyn after spending over a decade on staff with the Golden State Warriors and serving as head coach of the Bahamas men's basketball team since 2019.
His one season in New York was rather rocky. The Liberty won the Commissioner's Cup in late June but were 13-12 just before the All-Star break. They finished the season 26-18 -- their worst win percentage in a season since signing Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones in 2023 -- and earned the eighth and final seed in the playoffs, where they swept the No. 1 Minnesota Lynx but then were swept in turn by the No. 4 seed Atlanta Dream in the semifinals.
This is the third consecutive offseason that a WNBA coach has been let go after one year; it happened with Teresa Weatherspoon in Chicago (2024) and Chris Koclanes in Dallas (2025). But DeMarco is the first noninterim coach to win a playoff series in his first season and not return to coach the same team.
But New York has sky-high internal and external expectations. After the Liberty were eliminated in the semis -- a second straight year without a Finals appearance -- the Liberty's stars reiterated their desire to not just compete for championships but win them. So what's next for New York as the franchise looks for a new coach for the second offseason in a row? ESPN analyzes how the Liberty got here and how they move forward.
What went wrong for DeMarco in his first season?
Philippou: On paper, firing a coach who went 26-18 and swept the No. 1 seed in the first round of the playoffs might seem surprising, but it felt like this was the outcome New York was headed toward especially given how its season ended -- and with none of the Liberty's stars going to bat for their coach.
It seemed like there was a legitimate learning curve with DeMarco and his staff's first season in the WNBA. He spoke in his introductory news conference about ordering every book on the Liberty and having to learn about the history of the WNBA. And while he had experience as head coach of the Bahamas national team, coaching in sporadic FIBA windows is not the same as the grind of a 44-game regular season.
It was notable that Stewart critiqued the team for being too inconsistent this year. "This is not like cramming for a test. You got to be ready and ready to go since the jump," she said in response to a question about DeMarco's future.
There were some positives, like how DeMarco reset the Liberty's offense -- they were one of the better offensive teams in the league in the second half of the season. But even once Leonie Fiebich returned from injury, they were far from an elite defensive team, needed to be a true contender.
It often felt like Stewart took on more of a burden in leading the team than DeMarco. That was especially evident in how she was the one who spoke out the most after Game 2 of the semifinals, when the Liberty thought officials said they did not have a reset timeout to use at the end of overtime when they actually had one. Even in the aftermath, Sabrina Ionescu took more public accountability than DeMarco for not stopping the game to get clarity on whether New York had the timeout.
New York would not make the decision to part ways with DeMarco if it had felt Year 2 would be better than Year 1 under a new head coach. We'll see what the organization has in mind for its next hire, but it seems it did not have enough faith he could grow into the leader it needed by next season.
Andrews: There were a lot of moments leading up to Tuesday's move, but the lasting image of DeMarco's stint in New York is the blundered reset timeout Alexa mentions above. That mishandling of the closing seconds led to a crucial loss, but perhaps even more striking was the response afterwards. Instead of DeMarco taking ownership of his mistake, the players spoke up. It was a strange peek inside the leadership of the Liberty, and it felt like a nail in the coffin.
There were questions about how much knowledge DeMarco had about the WNBA since he was introduced as the head coach last winter. And that moment in the playoffs felt like a prime example of his lack of experience in the WNBA.
Voepel: Maybe DeMarco didn't realize how fast Kolb would pull the plug on him, so he thought he would have more time to adjust to the WNBA. But we can look at something Kolb said last year when the Liberty parted with Brondello.
"This is not a results-based organization," Kolb said in late September 2025 in explaining the decision. "This is not about not winning or winning. It's about how do we position ourselves to be at the top of the league in a real sustainable way as the league evolves."
In short, it seemed like Kolb didn't believe Brondello was innovative enough for a changing league. He apparently believed DeMarco was, but that didn't turn out to Kolb's and the Liberty's satisfaction, either.
So, whoever takes this job next has to understand what Kolb wants in terms of everyday results (which do matter) and also what meets the GM's definition of "sustainable" innovation. DeMarco probably thought he would get more of a chance to prove himself in both respects.
Who are the early candidates to be New York's next coach?
Voepel: In 2024, Brondello led the Liberty to the first WNBA championship in the organization's then 28-year history. After a first-round playoff exit in 2025, she was let go, despite seeming to have the support of Stewart. Now DeMarco is out. How does all that impact how appealing this job is?
One avenue for New York is a former NBA assistant. Becky Hammon (Las Vegas) and Natalie Nakase (Golden State) both came from those ranks, and both have won championships as WNBA head coaches. Hammon even played 16 seasons in the WNBA.
Accordingly, one name could be Los Angeles Lakers assistant coach Lindsey Harding, the former Duke star who was the WNBA's No. 1 draft pick in 2007. She played nine seasons in the WNBA, then began her coaching career as a scout and development coach with the Philadelphia 76ers. She also had a stint with the Sacramento Kings before joining the Lakers. It would seem likely that the Liberty will at least gauge her interest.
Another path could be what the Atlanta Dream did with Karl Smesko: Going to the college ranks to find a coach who knows the women's game well and is ready to move to the pro ranks. But, again, job security (or lack thereof) could be an obstacle.
Philippou: To Voepel's point, hiring someone who lacked familiarity with the WNBA and women's basketball came back to bite New York, so Kolb could target someone who checks those boxes. He could look at a NBA or WNBA assistant ready for a head coach role, but that begs the question of whether an inexperienced head coach is the right fit for this title-minded group and a limited championship window.
New York likes to go big, so it wouldn't be shocking for them to check in with the likes of Hammon and Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White. (Nakase would have been on that list too had the Valkyries not literally just won a championship.)
In addition to finding a new coach, what are the other offseason priorities for the franchise?
Philippou: It is quite possible the Liberty's roster will look fairly different in 2027. Stewart, Jones, Ionescu, Fiebich and Satou Sabally all remain under contract, as does French rookie Marine Fauthoux, who had a breakout semifinal series against the Dream.
New York will want an update on the status of Sabally, who had to step away from the court this summer to deal with the effects of her second concussion in a year. There has been no word publicly on when she might return to the court.
Ionescu also had a tough year health-wise, so this season will be all about her getting healthy. Her struggles in 2026 put much more of a burden on Stewart, especially, to be great every single night; but, longer term, Stewart will need more help if this team wants to win another championship.
That said, most of the Liberty's supporting cast will be free agents this offseason, including Pauline Astier, Marine Johannes and Han Xu. It wouldn't be shocking to see Kolb overhaul the bench and look to bolster the team's wing depth.
In the wake of the Liberty's semifinal elimination, New York players spoke more generally about what they want to see in future roster construction.
"It just took a while to find our identity, what we were going to do defensively and how we were going to play with teams," Stewart said. "When people say defense wins championships, it's f---ing true."
Added Fiebich, who lamented the loss of Nyara Sabally and Kayla Thornton in the last two expansion drafts: "We won in 2024 because we brought the toughness and we had the talent and we had the team chemistry. I think we've got to continue to find ways to get that back."