PORTLAND, Ore. — Sabrina Ionescu and Satou Sabally will not play in Thursday’s rematch in Portland, leaving the Liberty without two players who were expected to draw the loudest attention on their only visit to the city this season. Neither took part in New York’s 98-96 loss to the Fire on Tuesday night, and both are sidelined again for a game that has been circled as a homecoming.
Ionescu made the trip to Portland but is still waiting on a return after injuring her left foot in the Liberty’s preseason finale on May 3. She will not be reevaluated until early next week. Sabally, meanwhile, did not join the team on the trip and has yet to make her Liberty debut after missing the team’s two preseason games for reconditioning purposes and then being sidelined with a cyst.
The absence matters because these are not ordinary road games for either player. Ionescu and Sabally are Oregon Ducks greats, and Portland was always going to carry extra weight for them. Ionescu had campaigned for the WNBA to bring a team to Portland before the city received an expansion franchise in September 2024, a move that made her ecstatic, and she played a preseason game at Oregon’s Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene a year ago. For the league, Tuesday’s matchup also marked another step in the Fire’s first season as the WNBA’s 15th franchise, alongside the Toronto Tempo in their inaugural summers.
The Liberty have dealt with more than one injury concern on this trip. Rebecca Allen took part in Tuesday morning’s shootaround at Moda Center, but her season debut remains on hold because of soreness in her left leg. Allen missed both preseason games for reconditioning purposes, and the soreness flared up ahead of Thursday’s season opener. She told reporters she thought she would be ready by Sunday’s game at Washington, but that did not happen.
For New York, the practical problem is simple: the only Portland trip of the season has arrived before the roster is whole. Ionescu is under a three-year deal that keeps her in New York through the 2028 season, and Sabally is signed through next season, but neither is available when the Liberty would most want to lean on them. Thursday’s rematch will show whether New York can survive another game in a tough building while waiting for two of its highest-profile pieces to come back.
