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Megdal: New York Liberty headed to Barclays?

Toronto Raptors v Brooklyn Nets Photo by Alex Trautwig/Getty Images

New York Liberty will play all but two of its home games this season at the Westchester County Center, the schedule set before Joe Tsai bought the team from James Dolan. The question is where will the Liberty play in 2020-21?

Howard Megdal of High Post Hoops sees a couple of hints in the team’s Facebook postings. In the first hint, Facebook notes the Liberty will host the Seattle Storm on August 11 ... at Barclays Center.

And in the second —which is a bit of news on its own— is that the Liberty will play the Chinese national team in a preseason exhibition at Barclays on May 9. Tsai, of course, is executive vice-chairman and co-founder of Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant.

As Megdal writes of the Brooklyn date...

The addition is a welcome one, greeted with joy by a fanbase still recovering from the team’s exile from Madison Square Garden. And it begins to answer the question of just where the team will play moving forward under new owner Joseph Tsai.

The Liberty, one of the original teams in the WNBA, was averaging 10,000 fans at the Garden but Dolan claimed he was losing money —lots of money— opening the arena and moved the team last season to Westchester where they drew a quarter that number.

If the Liberty does indeed move to Barclays, it could be good news for the Liberty fanbase who’s more likely to take a subway to Brooklyn than the subway and MTA train to White Plains.

For Barclays, of course, it would add to the arena’s reputation as a primary sports venue.