BROOKLYN—No banner will be raised and no parade will be staged into Lower Manhattan. But the New York Liberty is still opting to view the 2025 season as a success, despite its lack of championship notoriety.

Picking up the pieces after a first-round ousting and the decision to move on from head coach Sandy Brondello, Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb offered only optimism when asked for an assessment on the recent campaign.

“I do, because I think it’s not based on a first-round out,” Kolb said. “But for injury, we were right there. I mean, we are away a win against a Chicago, Connecticut, Dallas away from potentially being the two seed. I mean, this team was was up there. I think it was successful from the sense of resiliency.”

Resiliency was far and away the best trait one could’ve gathered from this Liberty tour: eventually placing fifth on the eventual WNBA Playoff bracket was perhaps an accomplishment in of itself considering how little time the Liberty’s primary lineup spent together. To Kolb’s point, New York was still only three game out of the second seed at the end of the year, with losses to the aforementioned damned at the bottom of the standings looming large.

Each member of the team’s “big three” consisting of Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, and Breanna Stewart missed significant time with separate injuries while fellow Finals starter Betnijah Laney-Hamilton missed the entire year.

Kolb praised the way the team held its own even in elimination: in the final of the three-game set against the Phoenix Mercury, New York took fleeting second half leads after falling behind by 12 during the first 20. Special praise was offered for two-way talent Leonie Fiebich, who braved a rib fractured during the opening stanzas to return to action with the team’s back against the wall.

Kolb was also pleased to depth stars like Fiebich, Kennedy Burke, Rebekkah Gardner, and Isabelle Harrison were able to achieve in extended opportunities while lamenting the lack of extended time and preparation with Emma Meesseman, a rare in-season addition for the New Yorkers as they staged their championship defense.

All that and more was enough for the team to earn a postgame pick-me-up from Kolb, who was pleased with the sense of “battle” on display in the final hours.

“In no way is this a lost season,” Kolb declared. “There were many opportunities to learn … I think that I just learned that our group wants this, and I think that coming out of this, this loss, sometimes losses are just necessary.”

“I think, is we have a really resilient group. I think that was exemplified incredibly well in game three in Phoenix, this team really did battle.”

In the wake of a “necessary” defeat came the departure of Brondello, the all-time winningest head coach in franchise history and the hoister of the first WNBA Finals trophy the Liberty got its hands on last fall.

Kolb acknowledged the season also yielded why a change in on-court management was necessary, all while signing Brondello’s praises and defending her metropolitan rotation to the point that he declined to go into detail when asked what qualities he was looking for in the new boss, lest the leader of Australia’s women’s national basketball team be accused of lacking such attributes.

“We not only evaluate throughout the season our own team, but we also evaluate the league,” Kolb said. “With where this league is going, we felt very confident that we need to move forward in a way that we can evolve and continue to move with the league that makes sense.”

“What we learned is where this league is and where it’s going, and that was that’s crucial for us,” Kolb declared. “… I do have the belief that our players will now be motivated to know what’s next and that’s that’s for us to decide and move forward with.”