Anneli Maley has been a star in the WNBL for years. She was named WNBL MVP in 2022 and made three All-WNBL teams in recent years. Now, she’s trying to take her talents to the WNBA as a member of the New York Liberty.
Maley isn’t the same kind of star player in the W that she is in Australia. Nevertheless, fans immediately fell in love with her through glimpses of Liberty training camp and the team’s first preseason game against the Indiana Fever. The 27-year-old played pretty well, recording 13 points, 7 rebounds, and 3 assists in 30 minutes on the court. Her team-high five turnovers marred an otherwise solid preseason debut.
The Liberty’s roster is stacked, though, and keeping Maley around may be much more difficult than fans would like.
There’s not a ton of room on the Liberty’s roster
The Liberty currently have 20 players on their training camp roster and will have to trim that number down to 12 players with regular roster spots and two on development contracts. Most of those 12 spots are already spoken for.
Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, Satou Sabally, Leonie Fiebich, and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton take up the top six spots. Marine Johannes, Rebecca Allen, and Rebekah Gardner should take up three more spots. Given the Liberty’s lack of center depth behind Jones after losing Emma Meesseman, Nyara Sabally, and Isabelle Harrison in the offseason, Han Xu should also make the roster.
That leaves two regular roster spots and two development spots to fill and ten players still on the roster. Due to many absences, the Liberty’s first preseason game isn’t the best indicator to judge who may have a shot at these final roster spots. Pauline Astier, for example, would be a great backup point guard option, but she’s not with the team yet due to overseas commitments.
Maley survived the first round of Liberty cuts that saw Ny’Ceara Pryor and Ashley Owusu waived. But while she has a shot at a roster spot with the Liberty, the sheer number of players she still has to compete with makes it incredibly difficult.
Since she signed a training camp contract, the Liberty also cannot simply give her one of the two development spots. They would have to waive her, hope that she clears waivers (meaning that no other team will pick her up, as the Connecticut Sun did with Kyla Oldacre after the Dallas Wings waived her), and then re-sign her. If the Liberty wait long enough to waive her, the chances of other teams having room on the roster to pick her up are slim, but it could still happen.
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