The Liberty’s Big 3 are back — and they’ll be sticking around for a while.
Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones each signed three-year contracts running through 2028 to return to the Liberty, according to The Post’s Madeline Kenney.
Stewart said she signed for the standard max, which is worth $1.19 million in 2026 and is set to increase in the following two years to account for 17 percent of the salary cap as it rises under the WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement. Stewart, the 31-year-old former MVP, was eligible for the $1.4 million supermax.
Ionescu’s deal has the same structure, a league source told Kenney. The 28-year-old guard will receive the standard max at 17 percent of the cap in each season.
Financial terms of Jones’ pact were not immediately known.
“The biggest thing is for us, we needed to make sure that we’re really able to keep all the best players on the team,” Stewart said on her “Game Recognize Game” podcast. “That’s why you’ll see a few of us probably in the millions, and then everybody else trying to get as much as they can while also having a great team.”
Stewart and Ionescu had publicly declared their intentions to re-sign with the Liberty before the start of free agency, and The Post reported Jones’ commitment to returning on a multi-year deal this past weekend.
“This is an incredibly historic moment for the New York Liberty franchise,” general manager Jonathan Kolb said in a statement. “Re-signing Breanna, Jonquel and Sabrina reflects the trust, sacrifice and shared purpose that define what it means to represent the Liberty, this city and our fanbase. These three cornerstone players chose to invest in each other and in the long-term legacy of this organization.”
The Liberty formally announced the signings of their foundational trio Friday afternoon, shortly after the team introduced marquee free-agent addition Satou Sabally in Brooklyn.
Sabally signed a discounted two-year deal to jump from the Mercury to the Liberty, where she’ll reunite with Ionescu, her former college teammate at Oregon.
“We were on FaceTime for two minutes just like, ‘Oh my god,’ so that was the initial conversation,” Sabally said of Ionescu. “Obviously we had conversations before that. She actually told me, I don’t truly know everything that the front office is doing, but I know they’re doing the right thing and I know they’re gonna get the best player for us. I love that. … It’s great. We were both excited.”
Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, who re-signed with the Liberty earlier this week after missing all of the 2025 season, will receive a one-year, $400,000 deal, a league source told Kenney.
The Liberty could have given the veteran wing her applicable minimum salary of less than $300,000 because they exclusively controlled her rights as a reserved free agent.
With those five All-Star talents on the top of the marquee, the Liberty have been installed as betting favorites to win the 2026 WNBA title.
