Lighting way for 25 years
Liberty has reason to celebrate
The year was 1997. Michael Jordan and the Bulls won their fifth title. Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear. Tiger Woods became the youngest player ever to win the Masters.
And somewhere in a sports world so long dominated by men, the New York Liberty, one of eight charter member teams of the Women’s National Basketball Association, was set to begin its inaugural season.
Twenty-five years later, the Liberty players are still the Queens of the court in New York.
They’ve done more than wear the crown. They’ve owned it. And as part of their 25th anniversary, they’ve decided to launch their #OwnTheCrown campaign this season, their first full-time at Barclays Center.
The campaign is headlined by a video narrated by Hall of Famer, original Liberty player and now assistant coach of the New Orleans Pelicans Teresa Weatherspoon, with guest appearances by 2020 all-rookie team player Jazmine Jones and girls and women of the Big Apple.
“First and foremost, it’s an honor to be in the WNBA in general, but to be playing in New York — and New York, you know, is like the Mecca of basketball,” Jones said. “But at the end of the day it’s bigger than basketball… It’s an honor to be a part of something special. I’m just blessed and humbled to be here.”
Jones, spent her first pro season in the Bradenton, Fla. bubble with the rest of the mostly rookie-laden team. The players knew the world would be watching as they tried to combat racial injustice from isolation.
“Our players and specifically the Liberty... are truly pioneers and trailblazers for the Jaz Jones’s of the world,” Shana Stephenson, the Liberty’s VP of marketing, said. “So it’s representative of the New York Liberty’s rich history of our franchise history on the court, but not only just on the court, but also in the community and within our culture.
“We felt that this was a really great opportunity to celebrate women who have just been unstoppable,” Stephenson said, “and we know that for ourselves, but we’re often not seen, and recognized on a big broad platform.”
Aside from celebrating the anniversary, the Liberty also wanted to highlight the city’s strength during the pandemic, according to Stephenson.
The video opens with a shot of Jones hooping on a concrete court, the sounds of the city’s streets and the bounce of the basketball flooding in. Weatherspoon’s voice comes on: “We’re here and we’re making noise,” she says. “We’re making moves. We hold the blueprint and we hold the power that runs through the veins of our city.”
The video continues through various shots of the Liberty’s 2020 season and cuts to shots of different New Yorkers through the boroughs as Weatherspoon proclaims: “We are an untouchable force, an undeniable influence… We’re the heart, the mind, the soul,
the pioneers.”
The video closes by identifying the people in the video, including: Musician AMYRA from Harlem; owners of the Crabby Shack in Crown Heights; owner of the Bronx Native in the Bronx;
a young skater from a shop in Brooklyn; and USA girls basketball team New York Grit.
Then the video cuts back to a final shot of Jones spinning a ball as Weatherspoon says, “We own the crown.”