The Best Party in New York Is Only Getting Bigger

We originally published this scene report on August 28, 2024. We are recirculating it now that, on October 20, the New York Liberty won the 2024 WNBA Championship in a 67-62 game against the Minnesota Lynx.

It’s Tuesday night at Barclays Center, and two men are escorting the most important celebrity at the New York Liberty game through the crowded stands. Jason Sudeikis, Michael Imperioli, and Amy Poehler are already sitting far below, courtside; so is Fran Lebowitz in a seafoam linen blazer, and tennis stars Taylor Townsend and Francis Tiafoe too.

One of the men smiles coyly and asks a gaggle of fans who are clambering for photos, “Has anyone seen the elephant in the room?!” Holding a seafoam-colored braid in one of her anatomically incorrect hand-paws, Ellie the Elephant cocks a hip, bends her elbow, and drops down to dance to “Single Ladies.” The crowd surrounding her comes undone with delight. Forget Sudeikis and Leibovitz: The anthropomorphic dancing elephant carrying a Karrica half-moon basketball purse and wearing a slim-fitting jersey dress was the real celebrity the Liberty fans had come to see.

For many of the 11,455 attendees at the August 20th Liberty game against the Dallas Wings, it’s about to be prime time. The week prior, the Liberty clinched a playoff spot in a win over the Las Vegas Aces, the WNBA’s two-time reigning champions. By this point in the season, there are now only a handful of home games remaining before the playoffs begin, and with the best record in the entire league, the Liberty draw the most energized crowds in sports right now. With only two losses at home since the season’s start in May, could the team ride this high all the way to a championship ring? Their very first in a 27-year run?

After excitement surrounding the team grew powerfully last year, it has only continued to expand this season, with a 64 percent attendance increase at home games between 2023 and 2024, and season ticket-holders going up 106 percent year over year. With the outsize support of New York’s most idiosyncratic crowd behind them — young and old, die-hards and newbies, every identity, every background, every borough, and a list of celebrity supporters as mind-blowingly random as it is just right — the Liberty seem unstoppable. Every bad ref call results in fans on their feet; every basket is given a tidal wave of cheers. The crowd is so excitable at Liberty games that it’s hard to remember it wasn’t always like this.

“I saw them at Madison Square Garden years upon years ago, when no one cared about the WNBA,” Erica Ham told me as she was walking through the concourse during a time-out. What was the difference between those MSG season games and now? “It feels like a world without Trump right now in here,” Ham said. “And I’m excited because there’s a gold medalist out on the floor.” Breanna Stewart, who became the fastest player in franchise history this year to hit 500 field goals, and Sabrina Ionescu were back in New York from Paris after a thrilling women’s basketball final that ended with a 67–66 win over France and the U.S. Women’s Basketball team’s eighth straight gold medal.

Ham’s friend, Heaven Vergara, was at her first Liberty game: “Everyone’s all in one color. I feel like I’m missing out, not wearing the colors!” That’s because it’s #SeafoamSzn, or so the Liberty social-media team has deemed it — that particular shade of toothpaste green that floods Barclays during home games. Whether you’re here to peep the meme-worthy #CeLIBERTYrow (the who’s who that populates the courtside seats) or see what antics are on deck for themed games like the Women’s Empowerment game to Pride night, part of the Liberty’s appeal to less basketball-inclined fans is their ability to transcend sports and find the conversation in culture. Phyllis Spencer, a dance instructor at the Harlem YMCA, is one of the captains of the Timeless Torches, the over-40 dance troupe that performed in tasteful sequined costumes during the game. Waiting in the tunnel to take a photo with Ellie, Spencer said performing with the Torches for three years has been amazing. “It’s so much fun. We inspire the little ones to the adults. When they find out that the team is over 40, they’re like, ‘What? I can do that too.’” That night, the Torches performed a rousing rendition of Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” to a raucous audience. When was the last time you saw that kind of entertainment at an NBA game?

Kayla McGrail and her girlfriend, Meghan Braddock, watched from only a few rows behind the Liberty bench, not far from Ionescu in a hoodie and high bun. McGrail took Braddock to a Liberty game “maybe too early” in their relationship, she told me, laughing. “I barely went to NBA games,” Braddock said. “I was very anti-men’s sports, and I realized I just needed women to play sports to be interested in it.” Braddock has found the Liberty games to be a welcoming place specifically for queer people. “If you go to a men’s NBA game, it’s not that prominent. But here, there’s a lot of LGBTQ+ people, and I feel welcome.”

Is it possible that the expansion of the league and its growing appeal could extinguish this lightning in a bottle, the intimacy in the collective that makes Liberty games so unique? “I remember going to games when it was $25,” McGrail said. “Are they expensive now? Yes. Does it mean growth of the sport? Yes. So I’ll take it.”

Shopping for more Liberty merch at the gift shop, Safayi Altman recalled the first season following COVID as a particularly special time to be a fan. “It was really small; there were only some of us,” they said. “But it’s exciting to see the games sell out.” The week following the Women’s Empowerment game, season ticket-holders started to receive notifications about price increases — with posters on the active New York Liberty Reddit board expressing conflicting attitudes toward the increasing attention on the team. On the one hand, as the shirt reads, isn’t it cool that everyone watches women’s sports? On the other hand, if ticket prices increase, will everyone have the money to?

Gabe Stark, the designer behind Rare Breed BX, the custom-jersey company responsible for Ellie the Elephant’s signature jersey dress — so-called the “Herzey” — has been following the Liberty for the entire three decades of the team’s existence.

“The first couple years were really cool. We had Teresa Weatherspoon, we went to the finals a couple years. Then, it was kind of a lull in the middle. And, you know, last year we got it going again and we getting a nice groove now. Things are looking good,” said Stark. As a sports fan from New York, Stark recognized that winning does tend to come with some downsides. But winning is still winning.

“We’ve talked about what happens when the price goes up,” Carla Bautista, Stark’s girlfriend, said. “We’re coming no matter what.”

No matter what is kind of the whole vibe of a Liberty game right now. It’s the guy buying 30 Liberty hats to gift to his employees, who he also brought to the game. It’s the teen girl with her mom in the nosebleeds who stayed rapt even past the final buzzer. It’s a group of 10-year-old girls posing in a photo booth at a NYX Professional Makeup pop-up, two girls piggybacking on the others. The four girls play on a basketball team together in New York. When asked how many Liberty games they had been to, they shouted in unison, “A lot!”

What does it feel like seeing the professional women’s basketball players play here?

“It’s so cool,” one of the four jumped in. Why? “Because they’re older and they were once like us.”