Breanna Stewart to Return to Liberty Next Season, Will Get Core Player Designation

The Las Vegas Aces' victory in the 2023 WNBA Finals does not mean the end of the New York Liberty's hopes of winning a title with Breanna Stewart.

General manager Jonathan Kolb said Friday the team plans to designate Stewart a core player, allowing the franchise exclusive negotiating rights with the two-time MVP this offseason.

"She will not be an unrestricted free agent," Kolb said, per The Athletic's Ben Pickman.

Her Hoops Stats' Richard Cohen compared the WNBA core player designation to the NFL's franchise tag system. Each WNBA team can core one player headed for free agency, and once cored the player cannot sign directly with any other team.

Stewart had never before received the designation in six seasons and two championships with the Seattle Storm.

She led the Liberty with 23.0 points and 9.3 rebounds per game in the regular season after signing a one-year deal in New York in February.

During the regular season, she set a new regular-season for points scored in a single season by breaking Diana Taurasi's 2006 record (860) with 920 points.

Stewart was once again the team's leading scorer in the playoffs, where she averaged a double-double of 18.4 points and 10.2 rebounds.

That production helped lead the Liberty to the best regular-season win percentage (.800) in franchise history, as well as the team's first trip to the Finals since 2002.

Repeating those achievements might be more challenging in 2024, even if Stewart is guaranteed to remain on the roster.

The Liberty are unable to lock in another former MVP in Jonquel Jones, who cannot be labeled the team's core player because she has already played two seasons under the designation, per ESPN's Alexa Philippou.

Jones will head into this winter as an unrestricted free agent, although she said Friday she is "definitely trending toward coming back" to New York, per Winsidr's Myles Ehrlich.

The WNBA's one-year supermax deal in 2023 was worth approximately $234,000. If the Liberty offer that much to Stewart, the team will have about $466,000 remaining in cap space to build another Finals-caliber team around Stewart, 2020 No. 1 pick Sabrina Ionescu, Courtney Vandersloot, Betnijah Laney and Kayla Thornton, per Yahoo Sports' Cassandra Negley.

That leaves enough space to sign Jones, if the Liberty can convince her another year of Stewart is worth sticking around for.