When Dan Hughes watched the Liberty this season, it became obvious. There were flashes of Sandy Brondello’s WNBA skill set — from the guard who made offenses in Detroit, Miami and Seattle click — that seeped into offensive possessions of the team she now coached.
The Liberty had the same movement.
The same player action. A contested shot or an incoming closeout meant it was time to cycle the ball.
Brondello favored a quick tempo with Hughes’ Storm in 2003, and the Liberty featured the WNBA’s fifth-fastest pace 20 years later.
It’s impossible for a first-time coach to craft their own system, Brondello’s assistant coach and husband Olaf Lange told The Post.
But gradually, as San Antonio turned into Phoenix and then Brooklyn, Brondello forged one that reflected her playing style and shaped the Liberty’s Finals path, which continues with Sunday’s Game 1 against the Las Vegas Aces.
Brondello embraced the daunting task of guiding a superteam — a noun she dislikes — and deciphered how to blend personalities and individual strengths together. Lange called this her easiest job because of the Liberty’s talent. Brondello labeled it a challenging gig since they added three starters.
But beneath those superlatives attached to the latest chapter of a coaching career nearing its second decade sits Brondello’s WNBA success story.
She’ll face the Aces’ Becky Hammon — one of her former San Antonio Silver Stars — in the league’s first championship where both head coaches are former players, and Brondello’s perspective as an alumna made her ideal for this role, Lange and Hughes said.
“She understands her own system,” Lange said. “She knows what she wants, what she doesn’t want, what works, what doesn’t work, and now she can teach this team to play the right way.
“The team in Phoenix was the right team for her at that time, while this team was the right team at the time because she’s a different level of coach.”
But after the 2021 season — when a Finals trip ended against the Chicago Sky, where Lange, who married Brondello in 2005, was an assistant — Brondello didn’t have a job. Her contract expired, and she mutually parted ways with the Mercury. That was a difficult time for Brondello, Lange said, since she spent eight years in Phoenix.
Across that span, Brondello acquired her first true taste of being a WNBA head coach since averaging 11.3 points and shooting 41.5 percent as a guard. Her Silver Stars stint was difficult, and it lasted just one year (2010). But with the Mercury, Brondello inherited a roster filled with talent, including Diana Taurasi, DeWanna Bonner, Brittney Griner and Penny Taylor.
That’s when Hughes sensed Brondello was comfortable. Her Mercury teams made the playoffs every season. They lost in the first round just twice. Former Atlanta Dream head coach Nicki Collen, now Baylor’s women’s basketball coach, told The Post that Brondello turned Griner’s talent into a matchup nightmare.
“They were always playing their best at playoff time,” Hughes said, “and you just kinda almost came to expect that when she was in Phoenix, and I’m seeing the same thing here in New York.”
Brondello mastered coaching’s emotional side, too. She didn’t sway with the season’s highs and lows. She gave Breanna Stewart the freedom to win another MVP in 2023. She uncovered Jonquel Jones’ success from her MVP season in 2021. Betnijah Laney’s reputation as a defensive player has changed since averaging 17 points per postseason game.
“It’s hard to have five great players be equally involved,” Brondello said. “And I think we’ve accomplished that, and I think that will help us win a championship.”
This season emerged as the latest example of the coaching impact Hughes sensed when Brondello retired and asked to join his San Antonio staff in 2005.
Brondello sat at their office table and impressed during presentations, to the point where Hughes locked eyes with then-center Ruth Riley at one point and shared an “unspoken wow,” Hughes said.
Back then, and even when the Mercury won the 2014 title in her first season, Brondello didn’t have much experience. She navigated scenario after scenario, and now she can channel that knowledge for in-game adjustments — such as the Liberty’s pivot to zone in Game 2 against the Sun, a turning point in the semifinals.
Brondello admits she still isn’t the perfect coach. Her system still gets fine-tuned, and that’ll continue against Hammon the next two weeks in the Finals games that became the Liberty’s desired — and realistic — destination once the superteam formed.
It took Brondello, as the architect, to make sure they didn’t stray from that vision.
“I think her background in playing, her background coaching superstars and [Griner] and [Skylar Diggins-Smith] … that means she can coach the stars in the league,” Collen said.
Three keys to series
Betnijah Laney’s role: Laney’s 17.0 points per game in the postseason trails just A’ja Wilson (25.8) and Breanna Stewart (19.8) among remaining players, and she was often left open in the corner for key 3-pointers against the Sun. She attempted more than six 3-pointers in just one regular-season game. Then, it happened twice across the Liberty’s three victories in the semifinals. They need Laney to continue being more than just a defensive presence if the Aces utilize a similar defensive strategy.
The Jonquel Jones advantage: Jones, the WNBA’s MVP in 2021, has emerged at the right time for the Liberty and recorded a double-double in all six postseason games, helping them establish a rebounding advantage. Wilson, the 6-foot-4 forward who was also an MVP finalist, enters as the Aces’ rebounding leader. The Liberty outrebounded Las Vegas, 199-145, during five regular-season meetings.
What happens with Wilson: The Liberty limited Wilson to just 15.6 points per game across their five regular-season meetings, which sat well below her season average (22.8) and would be well below her postseason average (25.8), too. Perhaps Becky Hammon would be satisfied if Wilson can’t improve those offensive numbers against the Liberty and they still win, like the Aces did twice in the season series, but that seems unlikely.
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