LAS VEGAS — There’s no clearer illustration that the WNBA has leveled up to big sports business territory than the New York Liberty firing head coach Sandy Brondello. 

The team announced it would not renew Brondello’s contract on Tuesday morning, less than four full days after the defending champions lost in a first-round winner-take-all Game 3, ending a season rife with injuries and absences. Brondello leaves New York as the winningest coach in franchise history and the only coach to lead the original franchise to a WNBA championship.

She accomplished all of that in only four seasons. Cutthroat? Absolutely. Welcome to the big leagues of massive money and overwhelming expectations.

“Sports is a cruel world,” Aces head coach Becky Hammon, who played for Brondello when she was an assistant in San Antonio, said after shootaround on Tuesday ahead of Game 2 of Las Vegas’ semifinal series vs. the Indiana Fever. “You see it in the NBA a lot. I mean, what she was dealing with this year injury-wise, that’s tough.”

No matter the circumstances — and the injuries to their big three were a major one — Brondello fell short of the goal. The Liberty came into the year greedy and possessed the roster to fulfill that. All five playoff starters returned in an attempt to join the pantheon of rare repeat WNBA champions. They signed the most coveted midseason free agent by returning EuroLeague champion Emma Meesseman to the WNBA. Their depth dazzled in the background against any other in the league.

The lasting image of their season will be Breanna Stewart scoring all 14 of New York’s fourth-quarter points while playing on a sprained MCL in the first-round playoff loss. It showcased how little any of that promise worked out.

“It is professional sports,” Hammon said. “It’s always, ‘what have you done for me lately?’”

Hammon is one of three head coaches in the 13-team league who have held their jobs for at least two seasons after Seattle parted ways with Noelle Quinn earlier this week (Golden State is a notable exception, having just completed its first season). The others are squaring off in the semifinals. Phoenix hired Nate Tibbetts in 2024 and Cheryl Reeve has helmed the Minnesota Lynx since 2010.

The turnover is a sign of WNBA ownership taking winning seriously. No longer is it acceptable to carry on and hope for the best. No more, “maybe we’ll win the Draft Lottery when a generational talent arrives.” As free agency has blossomed, so, too, has the coaching carousel, even when players state publicly their support. Stewart was aggrieved after their Game 3 loss when asked, while sitting next to Brondello, if the coach should lose her job. A terse Natasha Cloud was more direct later with a small group of reporters.

“Sandy is one of the winningest coaches in this f***ing league,” Cloud said. “She just won a championship last year. I think there should be a lot more respect hung on Sandy’s head, and that can be said to our fans, too. She just brought you the first championship ever, changed this s*** around in the last few years. Y’all should put some f***ing respect on her name.”

The decision was made anyway. Yet, splitting with a coach is merely half the equation. There’s an easy case to be made that the Liberty underperformed even with their starters available. They lost to Hammon’s Aces in the 2023 Finals despite Las Vegas losing two starters due to injury in the days prior to Game 4. Las Vegas came back from double digits in the final minutes to upset New York on its home court. Even in the championship year, the Liberty never reached full octane and nearly lost the trophy in a nail-biter Game 5.

Brondello didn’t do enough for the Liberty lately, but now, who can come in and do more? This isn’t an organization in rebuild mode, content with growing alongside a young, inexperienced head coach. That’s the lane of the Washington Mystics or Dallas Wings.

New York is a championship contender that wants to hold onto its key pieces, beginning with their first No. 1 draft pick, Sabrina Ionescu, and carrying into the names general manager Jonathan Kolb wrote on a whiteboard all those years ago. Stewart didn’t create a “Stew York” brand identity to question whether she wants to be in New York. She said unequivocally she would be back next season when asked after Game 3.

The Liberty will begin the coaching search immediately and should do so with urgency. There is a two-team expansion draft upcoming and a bonanza of a free agency that includes 75% of the league, with the current CBA expiring at the end of October. They’re in reset mode, making an already tenuous offseason more difficult at a critical juncture.

“Every time you bring in new leadership, you have to create a new foundation,” Hammon said. “And a lot of times, I think organizations are quick to pull up their whole foundation that they’ve been laying. It takes time. It takes patience.”

Hammon said she “didn’t love it” for Brondello, who also won a championship as the head coach in Phoenix and has the “rare” coaching qualities of being a solid coach and person.

“You don’t win every year,” said Hammon, who missed the Finals for the first time in her head-coaching career last season. “But if you got a good coach, you keep them, and you ride it out.”

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There are no better examples than the ones Hammon used in a five-minute conversation about the short leash of coaches: Reeve, and retired San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, whom Hammon worked for in the NBA. Hammon pointed out Popovich won five championships in 20 years.

“That means he missed 15,” she made clear.

Reeve won four WNBA championships in her first eight seasons in Minnesota, creating the most recent true dynasty in the league. Minnesota cratered to barely above .500 in 2018 and didn’t reach a .700 winning percentage until a year ago. The No. 1-seeded Lynx are on the crest of a second consecutive Finals appearance after taking the Liberty to a full five games in 2024.

Those are outliers of a bygone era. Now it’s looking more like the norm in professional organizations that are impatient for trophies and the cash haul that comes with that. Is it a smart move? The jury is still out, and may be for a while.