RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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After the Liberty won Game 2 of the 2024 WNBA semifinals matchup against the Las Vegas Aces, Betnijah Laney-Hamilton was asked what inspired her near impossible task of consistently getting defensive stops against her opponent’s elite trio of guards.
The Liberty guard, who was just three months removed from a procedure to clean up two loose bodies in her right knee, had just completed 25 intense, taxing playoff minutes chasing around Jackie Young, Chelsea Gray and Kelsey Plum — on one healthy leg.
Undoubtedly in pain, Laney-Hamilton fielded the question near the Liberty’s locker room inside the bowels of Barclays Center. And she deadpanned — like she so often did in front of a crowd of quote-hungry New York journalists — with a one-word answer before the reporter could even finish asking the question.
“Pride,” she said. And with minimal emotion, she repeated the same word before a follow-up question could be asked.
That was Betnijah Laney-Hamilton. Some called her Queen B. The ultimate professional.
She minced words and let her play on the court do the talking. And that talk resonated loudly when she helped propel the Liberty to its first-ever WNBA title in 2024 following a thrilling five-game Finals series win over the Minnesota Lynx. That series came after the Liberty took down the defending champion Aces, 3-1, in the semifinals.
Days later, Laney-Hamilton told Ros Gold-Onwude during a City Hall championship celebration that she texted then-head coach Sandy Brondello that she would put her battered body on the line “until the wheels fall off.”
About a year and 10 months later, the wheels finally fell off.
Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb decided to unceremoniously waive Laney-Hamilton in a move that dashed away a foundation piece that helped build the franchise to what it is today.
On paper, the move was made to make room for French rookie Marine Fauthoux on a multi-year deal.
But to the culture of Liberty basketball and the fans that cultivated it, the move snatched the soul out in a way they’re not so used to seeing.
Laney-Hamilton was an OG Barclays Center Liberty, a label that now remains only for Sabrina Ionescu, Rebecca Allen and Han Xu as the lone players still on New York’s active roster dating back to the team’s first days on the corner Atlantic and Flatbush Ave.
The Rutgers product landed in the northeast during a time the Liberty, the WNBA and New York as a whole experienced turmoil.
Back then, there were no mentions of a title team in the Big Apple.
The Liberty came off a dreadful 2-20 Wubble season in 2020 in the days of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the men’s team in Midtown — led by owner James Dolan, who notoriously left the Liberty for dead — couldn’t come close to sniffing the Larry O’Brien trophy either.
Laney-Hamilton helped right the Liberty ship in 2021 after a career-defining 2020 with the Atlanta Dream. She became an All-Star for the very first time in 2021 while leading the team in scoring (16.8) and getting them into the postseason for the first time in four years.
Her All-Star season was followed by one with a lesser role with the team pulling off an offseason heist that brought in stars Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot.
Laney-Hamilton never complained. Never made public demands for a role change. Never butted heads with newer teammates.
Conversations about Laney-Hamilton’s role became a hot topic only in 2026 under new head coach Chris DeMarco, who never seemed to favor the fan favorite. She started just five games in 2026 before minutes dwindled as she was relegated to the bench.
She averaged 30.4 minutes per game from 2021-24 (an offseason meniscus injury forced Laney-Hamilton to miss the entire 2025 season). She averaged 13.2 points and 3.4 assists during that span.
The numbers plummeted to 4.7 points per game in 16.8 minutes before completely falling out of DeMarco’s rotation in 2026.
The demotion created multiple somber media availabilities as she candidly said she was unsure of what her role was.
The fans felt the sadness, too. The same fans forced to move rows back — or even higher into the upper bowl — after years of never worrying about being priced out by the organization as Laney-Hamilton became Brooklyn’s first WNBA star.
The fans held the team down before the WNBA became the popular, in-demand ticket in town. The team didn’t return the favor.
They chanted “We want Laney” as she watched gorilla glued on the bench throughout the eight healthy scratches that preceded Thursday’s release.
DeMarco, the antagonist of the storyline, stood on the sideline stone-faced each time demands rang through a mostly packed Barclays Center arena.
The feelings of shock and sadness derive from the thought that this all could have been avoided. That a player so important to the fabric of Liberty basketball could’ve had a better send-off.
No, this isn’t the same guard from before the meniscus injury that flashed two-way greatness on a nightly basis during the Brondello era. Some games at the start of the regular season showed her bounce wasn’t quite all there. She needed a bit more more leeway to really judge if she could get her feet back under her after spending a year rehabbing.
Maybe those were the first signals that a new setting was needed for Laney-Hamilton to prove she can return to form, which is still in the realm of possibility. Just one more chance to prove herself — like she did with a momentum-shifting 2024 WNBA Finals Game 2 performance after an overall subpar postseason while dealing with her hurt knee.
But to be cast away in nearly the same fashion of a training camp cut seems beneath her stature within this franchise.
Unfortunately, the signs of this happening appeared near as Kolb failed to unload Laney-Hamilton’s $400,000 salary for an impactful piece at last wee...
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