How the New York Liberty’s court became among WNBA’s most notable

In Super Squads, The Athletic follows the New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces in their quests to win a WNBA championship. Our reporters will tell the stories of the players on two of the most star-studded teams in league history and examine how their paths shape the future of the WNBA. All fashion items discussed were identified via search on Google Lens.

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NEW YORK — Last August, the New York Liberty separated themselves from the rest of the WNBA by simply walking onto the floor for a pair of back-to-back home games against the Los Angeles Sparks. As players trickled out for warmups, they did so on an Xbox-inspired court, one featuring green dots in the paint and sonic waves at opposite ends of the 3-point arc. At the time, according to Xbox, it marked the first secondary court design for current WNBA teams.

New York won both games. The season continued. And although the Liberty went back to playing on their usual floor, effects from that early August stretch can still be seen today. At the start of the 2023 season, as the Liberty trotted out a revamped roster featuring two former WNBA MVPs, they did so on an equally refreshed court. Among their inspirations in the redesign was the Xbox floor.

“We took that as an opportunity to say, well if the league approved (the Xbox court) then we could push the envelope a little bit more,” Liberty chief brand officer Shana Stephenson said. “We could be a lot more creative about how we want to approach this design and not do something that’s been done before.”

When the Liberty moved from Westchester County Center to Barclays Center, debuting in Brooklyn in 2021, their literal hardwood remained the same. The old court, Stephenson said, “didn’t really tell a story.” Its wood had a standard light stain, and its perimeter was black. As the organization looked to establish its identity under new ownership (in 2019 Joe and Clara Wu Tsai purchased the Brooklyn Nets and Liberty), the court was another form of expression in need of revisiting.

Stephenson estimates that conversations about a court reboot started in late 2021. The design process, which was a collaboration between the team’s business and basketball operations, began last September. It was finalized in March. The fact its completion coincided with the roster additions of Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot “was a bit of luck in terms of everything working out in our favor,” Stephenson said.

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There were more than 20 tweaks and options, some of which had a plain wooden floor with a tile design and others of which implored gray wood. The eventual result, general manager Jonathan Kolb said, was a court the team hopes is another way it is set apart from its competition.

“We wanted it to be really unique,” Kolb said. “That when you see it, you know it’s a Liberty court.”

Added Stephenson: “We didn’t want to introduce a new court that felt very similar to our previous court. We wanted to make sure that it was very noticeable that this was different, that this was a new era.”

Perhaps the most eye-catching element of the floor is the crown, which is shaded from one 3-point line to the other. Stephenson said it is inspired by the one on the Statue of Liberty, who is “pretty much the muse behind our brand, our storytelling, our identity.” The organization used the tagline “Own the Crown” in past seasons, and to Stephenson, the headwear additionally represents “the Liberty being the queens of women’s basketball, within Brooklyn, within New York” and being a “metaphor for championships.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that the design process featured multiple rounds of crown edits. One featured dozens of miniature crowns printed across the floor.

Other elements of the new design stick out, like the seafoam highlights within the paint — a subtle yet key differentiator from other floors around the WNBA — and the gradient seafoam and black shading along the baselines. Every time a player runs from the bench to the scorer’s table to check into the game, they jog over the names in the team’s ring of honor, which are printed in black font on the sideline. Acknowledging Liberty history is another “important element of who we are as an organization,” Stephenson said.

New York needed league approval on the eventual design, requiring sign-offs on elements like the coloring of the out-of-paint sections and the sizing of the sidelines. The Xbox court from 2021 helped both the team, and league, see what a dark wood would look like in Barclays Center — though the shade of their floor is lighter than the 2022 alternate — as did the fact that the Nets have played on a court with gray hardwood since 2019. (At the time of Brooklyn’s creative pivot, the NBA had never had an all-gray court before.)

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Stephenson saw the court in-person for the first time on the day before New York’s home opener. The following day, players took notice of it for themselves. “When I do walk out and see it, it’s different and I like it,” guard Sabrina Ionescu said.

Even opposing players have praised the redesign. Said Minnesota Lynx guard Kayla McBride: “It’s cool. I really like the colors, the contrast. It’s amazing what they’ve done here in the last couple of years from playing out in Westchester to being here. It’s awesome and that’s the evolution of our league, and that’s something to be proud of.”

Just under a month into the season, the Liberty (6-3) are still looking to make improvements in a number of areas. At home, they’ve lost twice in five tries. Nevertheless, optimism remains high. So too does excitement about where such moments might occur.

“We’re looking to do some really special stuff on-court,” Kolb said. “And we wanted a backdrop to complement that. I think we achieved it.”

The Super Squads series is part of a partnership with Google Lens. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Illustration: Ray Orr / The Athletic; photo: Ben Pickman / The Athletic)