The New York Liberty fired Chris DeMarco on Tuesday after one season, ending a short run that was supposed to last much longer. Instead of a fresh start, the Liberty are back in the market for another coach.
The move comes after a season that ended with the Liberty swept in the semifinals by the Atlanta Dream, a result that made DeMarco’s future the first offseason question. The team had entered the playoffs as the No. 8 seed, and the loss in Game 3 sent the season into the kind of hard stop that leaves little room for waiting.
That is why the firing lands so sharply. In late April, Jonathan Kolb had said he was willing to be patient with the process after hiring DeMarco, a first-time WNBA head coach with a long NBA assistant background with the Warriors. Six months later, the patience ran out. The Liberty are now set to go through their fourth coaching search since 2019, a marker that says as much about the franchise’s restlessness as it does about one coach’s record.
DeMarco’s season was not without wins. The Liberty captured their second Commissioner’s Cup during his stint, and for stretches of the year the team looked like it might settle into something steadier. But the middle of the season also brought a 2-8 stretch, and the final weeks exposed how thin the margin had become. The most visible flashpoint came in the Game 2 overtime loss to the Dream, when a timeout snafu stood out as the clearest sign of DeMarco’s inexperience in the job.
After the season-ending Game 3 loss, DeMarco said he expected to return in 2027, a belief that now reads as a promise made too early. Sabrina Ionescu captured the uncertainty in the room when she said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” and Breanna Stewart was just as blunt: “Those decisions aren’t ours.” Stewart also called it a “missed opportunity,” which is what this season became for a team that expected more than another reset.
The Liberty had already shown they were willing to make hard coaching decisions after Sandy Brondello was let go a year after leading the franchise to its first WNBA championship. This latest change fits the same pattern, only with less stability and more urgency. The next coach will inherit a roster that has already been through one short experiment and is looking for something that can last longer than a single season.
