A Tale of Two Coaches: Fever, Liberty Bosses Deal With Similar WNBA Pressure

Chris DeMarco and Stephanie White deal with a similar pressure as they enter a widely varied WNBA coaching experience.

BROOKLYN—Meet the new boss … same as the old boss. New York Liberty fans certainly hope so, at least in one rather vital WNBA department.

(Photos courtesy of Getty Images/ New York Liberty)

Chris DeMarco, a tenured assistant with the Golden State Warriors, has made his first appearance in the head coach’s seat on Barclays Center’s bench, making his unofficial debut at the helm of the Brooklyn ballers in a Saturday preseason duel with the Indiana Fever. DeMarco is the face leading the Liberty into the second stage of its new wave of contention, headlined by an elite triumvirate, replacing the Toronto-bound Sandy Brondello.

Despite overseeing last season’s first-round heartbreak, Brondello going down in metropolitan ledgers as the first coach to lead the basketball-loving city’s most renowned women’s team to a championship can’t be erased. It also set up her successor for unprecedented pressure, rendering the two-game exhibition slate the closest thing DeMarco will have to a honeymoon at the helm.

All that and more is built on the double-edged sword of New York welcoming back its “big three” core, comprised of Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, and Breanna Stewart, for the foreseeable future. Their fellow 2024 champion Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, likewise re-upped, while Satou Sabally, one of the Liberty’s round one vanquishers from Phoenix last fall, also joined the seafoam cause.

DeMarco on championship expectations:#WNBA pic.twitter.com/Luq5JTNyvT

— Geoff Magliocchetti (@GeoffJMags) April 17, 2026

DeMarco is well aware of the expectations and has made it a point to embrace and acknowledge them whenever they come up. Fulfilling on his post-hire promise to “pour into” any bit of reading material he could find on the Liberty, DeMarco has consulted verbal and textual sources on adapting to the historic metropolitan needs.

“I spoke to people in the building, Liberty legends, other people in the WNBA,” DeMarco, now the proud owner of a Rebecca Lobo throwback jersey as part of the “Court Origin” aesthetic rollout, the Liberty is engaged with alongside fellow original squads Los Angeles and Phoenix. “It’s just learning … It was really nice being able to be in this building and be around everybody, even if it’s like, going to a [Brooklyn] Nets game and then we’re at the Crown Club after. People could tell me about something that happened with the Liberty last year. You run into fans on the street and they’re [talking about] two years ago, this happened.”

“It’s just being connected. And I think that’s, that’s what it’s all about, and that, by the way, the energy in the city is unbelievable right now for the season to start, anywhere I go, like, people are stopping me, like, hey, you know, you guys better be ready. Like, we’ve been waiting. We’re excited. So, you know, I love that.

Liberty Leads Light It Up

DeMarco fully expected metropolitan sloppiness to emerge in his first act, and it manifested to the tune of letting up the first eight points to a team featuring Kelsey Mitchell and a returning Caitlin Clark. New York also committed 22 turnovers that yielded the final margin and then some in an eventual 109-91 defeat that lacked presumed metropolitan contributors like Sabally and Leonie Fiebich.

The faith of a surprisingly spirited preseason crowd was nonetheless rewarded thanks to several Brooklynites resembling their mid-season forms. Stewart, perhaps assisted by European play, had 16 points and five rebounds in less than 12 minutes while the return of Laney-Hamilton after a yearlong medically induced absence was well-received. Another returning fan favorite, Han Xu, led New York with 20 points while Anneli Maley (13 points, 7 rebounds, 5-of-5 at the line) was one of the depth stars who took advantage of an extended opportunity. DeMarco does appear to be leaving an impression on his new proteges despite her relative youth in the W.

“He’s vocal, he’s light-hearted. But he has a sternness to him as well,” Laney-Hamilton, working with her third Liberty. So it’s nice that we can joke a little bit, but it’s also like, okay, this is what we’re doing. It’s a really good environment to be a part of with him. All of the coaching staff, I think, they’ve really done a good job of coming in and implementing what it is that they want to do, but then also allowing us to kind of be us, be free.”

White’s Fight Is Surprisingly Similar

If anyone can understand the struggle of what DeMarco is working through, it’s, ironically enough, his Saturday opponent … one of the more tenured names on the current W circuit.

White is one of three current bosses to oversee her current employer’s endeavors for at least 100 games, joining Becky Hammon (Las Vegas) and Cheryl Reeve (Minnesota). This will be the second year of her second term, having previously overseen two prior tours. The first ended in the 2015 WNBA Finals, which stands as the last time Indiana stood among the last couple.

In between her Fever tenures, White was tasked with overseeing both the Vanderbilt women’s basketball program and what perhaps will stand as the final glory days of the Connecticut Sun.

Fever head coach Stephanie White on the biggest lesson she took from last year:#WNBA pic.twitter.com/d25Erv3pjk

— Geoff Magliocchetti (@GeoffJMags) April 25, 2026

Bringing her back alongside a plethora of talent, a good bit of it homegrown, carries the unspoken edict of a championship being the expectation, a return after a decade being perhaps the bare minimum to stay the course. White could almost be a victim of her own success: with several franchise faces injured (i.e. Clark, Sophie Cunningham, Aari McDonald), White guided her group to within a win of the Finals, to the point where the eventual champion Las Vegas Aces needed an overtime that didn’t feature Mitchell (yet another injury) or Aliyah Boston (fouled out) to finally flush the Fever.

In the face of the pressure that has created more undeniable pressures, White’s embracing her new gift with the regulars back, creating perhaps the perfect blueprint for DeMarco to follow in his own first tour.

“I think the biggest takeaway from a season ago is just how connected our locker room was, and how important that is to teams,” White continued. “Connected teams are winning teams, and it’s not always going to go the way that we want it to go, individually or collectively. But maintaining that connection, being able to have honest conversations with one another, being able to hold one another accountable and be held accountable, being able to lift one another up and be each other’s biggest supporter, I think all of those things are important lessons that we learned a year ago. We wanted to be a player-led locker room, and to continue that is important.”

Indiana and New York are scheduled to meet four times this season, the first being a June 6 Brooklyn bout in primetime.

Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags