The New York Liberty’s playoff push has a new brand of championship expertise behind it.
So much modern debate, particularly that centered around the comparison of individual players’ qualifications for the so-called “GOAT”, essentially devolves into asking the question of “how many rings” the player in question has earned.
By that logic, such debaters should get used to hearing and referencing New York Liberty interior threat Stefanie Dolson.
It feels like every team the 30-year-old Dolson has touched over the past year-plus has turned into championship gold. She was, in fact, wearing it last summer in Tokyo when she represented the United States in the Olympics’ inaugural 3×3 basketball competition, earning the first-place medal as the leading scorer in the final victory over the Russian Olympic Committee. When she came home, she helped push the Chicago Sky beyond the limit, playing an active role in the franchise’s first WNBA Finals victory, a four-game triumph over the Phoenix Mercury.
Even though her local mailing address changed, moving from Chicago to New York, Dolson’s championship propensity lingered: her Liberty training camp entrance was delayed by her participation in Hungarian squad Sopron Basket’s quest to the 2021-22 EuroLeague Women title. The Port Jervis, NY native’s newly-won hardware doesn’t even account for her amateur honors at Minisink Valley High School and the University of Connecticut.
Surprisingly, Dolson found that the biggest takeaway of gratitude from her most recent championship efforts was the impact the hard times had on her hardwood career. Last year’s Chicago group, for example, started 2-7 and entered the postseason with a .500 record. A strenuous Olympics schedule only exacerbated her hardships.
She’ll remember those valleys more than any trophy hoist.
“The past year has taught me to be confident in myself,” Dolson said upon her New York entry in February. “It was just such a roller coaster of like emotions and experiences. There was going to Austria (for Olympics training and qualifiers) but missing half of my Chicago season. Then there was going to Tokyo and missing all of the three weeks of practices that my team was going through. I was being happy but was also being really sad, emotionally. (What kept me going was) becoming confident in who I am as a player, knowing that my role changed, but my status won’t.”
“I just learned to stay confident and stay levelheaded with whatever experiences were thrown my way.”
“She’s a really good leader. She leads, obviously, by actions …”
Championship expertise was on the Liberty’s wish list as the “hybrid rebuild” initiated by general manager Jonathan Kolb was remodeled to turn into something bigger, as the previous season saw the Liberty bring Seattle champions Natasha Howard and Sami Whitcomb in through a trade. The Dolson surplus was among the finishing touches, as was the hiring of head coach Sandy Brondello, one of the winningest coaches in WNBA history and a witness to one of Dolson’s triumphs: the Australian overseer’s final contests with the Phoenix Mercury came in a four-game defeat at the hands of Stef and the Sky in aforementioned domestic championship series.
“We brought Stef in because she’s obviously a talented basketball player. She was filling a big hole for us by having a big five player that had playoff experience,” Brondello said of Dolson’s impact at the onset of the postseason. “She’s a really good leader. She leads, obviously, by actions … She’s been in these situations before and has a calming effect on it. I don’t get too high or too low, but you need people in the locker room that can stay chilled.”
The apparently icy Dolson was happy to embrace those leadership duties from the get-go.
“Being a leader, it’s something that I love, honestly,” Dolson said. “It’s a role that I embrace. I enjoy teaching, I enjoy taking care of my teammates, making sure that everyone’s having fun and enjoying themselves. At the day, we are playing a game. It is really important to me to have a role like that … that chance to be myself and be that role of a vet.”
It’s thus no surprise that the former Warrior’s late-season emergence are fueling the Liberty’s surprise championship aspirations: the team earned an x next to its name in the standings after a Dolson double-double (15 points, 12 rebounds) provided part of the difference in the victorious season finale over Atlanta on Aug. 14. She’s also one of the reasons the Liberty are one of six teams left on the WNBA playoff bracket, scoring 10 third quarter points that helped New York maintain a shocking lead over her former comrades from Chicago in the opening round of the 2022 WNBA Playoffs.
Dolson helped erase the Liberty’s problems that plagued them in the regular season, as her seven rebounds in the 98-91 win that opened the best-of-three series made up for shortcomings on the boards that partly doomed New York to the seventh seed in the first place. Her late summer efforts have not gone unnoticed.
“She’s been on a championship team, she’s played at the highest level, she knows what it takes to win and she sacrifices for us every night,” Sabrina Ionescu said. “That’s means whether she’s going to need to score, she’s going to need to pass, she’s going to need to guard the best big man, she’s really adaptable and she’s able to bring that (energy) every single night. Overall, she’s a really unselfish player and that helps us get our offense moving.”
“We kind of hold her to that standard every single night. She’s been a great leader, she’s grown into that role and we expect that every single night from her.”
The need to “focus on the now.”
Dolson’s autobiography has featured so many happy endings and the Liberty’s next challenge would be no stranger to sports movie cliches of modern Hollywood. After Chicago denied the Liberty advancement in the ultimate style … a 100-62 Saturday shellacking that served as the most one-sided defeat in WNBA postseason history … the Brooklyn stage is set for a winner-takes-all finale on Tuesday night (9 p.m. ET, ESPN).
All, in this case, is a chance to play for a spot in the WNBA Finals, with the winner of another decisive contest between Connecticut and Dallas, set to be the next hurdle.
With the Liberty going into hardwood battle against the current ringbearers with a group of young veterans, Dolson has presumably been called upon to regale those making their biggest postseason contributions yet with tales of championship glory. You’ll find few better teachers of do-or-die games, after all, than the athlete who ended her collegiate career with a 17-point, 16-rebound double-double in the national title game, as Dolson did when UConn topped Notre Dame in 2014.
But Dolson’s mental impact goes far beyond the cliches. These New Yorkers, after all, often keep the past in the past, hammering home the need to “focus on the now.”
Rather, Dolson has expanded her role as the most consistent presence in the ever-changing Liberty lineup (only she and Ionescu have appeared in all 38 Liberty games this season) to an off-court setting. Well known for a larger-than-life personality in her previous stops, armed with a contagious smile and a willingness to fit her dog Theo into any conversation, Dolson’s done her part to keep the New York roster united on the same wavelength, an effort perhaps best defined by her friendship with bench contributor Marine Johannes.
Like so many other pairings on the 2022 Liberty, there isn’t much in common between Dolson and Johannes. The former is meant to be a finishing touch to brighter postseason showings, the latter being one of the rare remnants of the Liberty’s star-crossed days at Westchester County Center (where Dolson, ironically, partook in some of her high school championship endeavors).
Johannes, back in American basketball after the COVID-19 pandemic kept her in Europe for two seasons, had some catching up to do when her metropolitan return missed the first dozen games due to her lingering international commitments. Thanks to Dolson’s social tutelage, it didn’t take long for her to connect with the modern Liberty group that had just one other leftover (Bec Allen) from the 2019 season.
“She’s a great leader on the team. She talks a lot,” Johannes noted after Wednesday’s Game 1 victory. ”I spend a lot of time with her off the court, so we’ve talked a lot, we share each other’s stories, and it helps on the court. I’m happy that we can say we’re good friends now.”
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Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
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