After five years of effort culminated in a historic offseason and ushered in a superteam era for the New York Liberty, general manager Jonathan Kolb is the 2023 WNBA Executive of the Year.
The four-year rebuild turned a corner when the Liberty won the 2020 draft lottery. The team selected Sabrina Ionescu out of Oregon, who has come into her own as a top 3-point shooter in the league. After leading the charge on that pick, Kolb hired championship-winning head coach Sandy Brondello ahead of 2022.that brought 2021 MVP Jonquel Jones to Brooklyn from the Connecticut Sun in January.
A month later, He signed leading free agents Breanna Stewart and Courtney Vandersloot. Kolb spent a long time courting Stewart, a two-time WNBA champion and the 2018 MVP who utilized the attention from the league to raise awareness about its issues — a perfect leader forVandersloot is also a WNBA champion and a five-time All-WNBA Team selection, making New York the WNBA's first team with at least three All-Stars.
"What's really important here is we didn't just target the best names on a sheet and try to get them all," Kolb said in February."We were really tactical with researching and going about getting people that will fit what we're building and that's these two right here, as well as JJ [Jones] joining." That ethos proved effective as the Liberty ended the regular season with the second-best record in the league . That .800 winning percentage is the highest in the franchise’s 27 seasons, a huge improvement from its .444 mark in 2022.last month, a victory that featured stellar performances from Ionescu and Jones.
While the franchise now stands to win its first league title, it also stands to bring New York its first basketball championship since 1973.
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