There was a learning curve for Leonie Fiebic in the games and months, in fact most of the season, before her breakout performance, until Liberty lineup changes on Sunday saw her slide into the starting group for Game 1 against the Dream, where she scored a career-high 21 points and all but ensured she'd stay there.
It happens to every rookie.
Six minutes here. Five minutes there.
In the end, it was his first start after both Courtney VanderSloot and Betnijah Rainey-Hamilton missed the game.
Coach Sandy Brondello knew Fiebic, who acquired her rights last year and signed with the Liberty for the 2024 season, would have to adjust to the WNBA.
The Liberty returns all of its starters from last year's run to the WNBA Finals, but with a revamped bench, the wings also had to learn how to complement each other.
That all changed against the Mystics on June 9. Taking over for starter Kayla Thornton in VanderSloot's absence, Fiebich played the entire fourth quarter and, along with Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones and Laney Hamilton, helped close out Liberty's narrow five-point victory.
This game also wasn't won by a large margin, but instead marked Brondello's first appearance with a starting XI, with VanderSloot on the bench and Fiebich in the starting line-up when Brondello started on Sunday.
At the time, and throughout the rest of the regular season when Coach Brondello needed those players, they were just closers.
Their cameos were limited to small gatherings at the end of matches.
But since the Olympic hiatus, the Liberty lineup that includes Fiebich and four other regular starters has a net rating of 22.1 in 36 minutes, and its 23.8 this season is tops among all combinations league-wide.
After the break, in the 68 minutes VanderSloot played, the net rating dropped to 1.6, with the biggest drop coming from defense.
“I knew it,” Brondello said after the Liberty's shooting practice Tuesday night as they tried to finish off their first-round series against the Dream at Barclays Center. “We study analytics. We follow the numbers and what works, but it's not even analytics. It's what you see that counts. Sometimes you just follow what you see, what works best, follow your gut, follow what you see.”
“But when you look at the analytics, you see how tough we are on both sides. With Leo there, we're even tougher on both sides. And Leo is the denominator.”
But it took some time for everything to fall into place.
It took some time for Liberty to finally figure out what the best combination was.
Despite having new members lined up for the opening games of Games 1 and 2 of the playoffs, he only played a combined 122 minutes in 21 regular season games.
Vandersloot was absent due to personal reasons.
Rainey Hamilton missed most of the season while recovering from a knee injury and subsequent minor knee surgery.
Stewart, Jones and Ionescu all missed the game as well.
Still, there was no clear difference in the lineup going into the Olympic break.
Lineups with Fiebich boasted a net rating of 24.6.
The lineup featuring VanderSloot, a four-time WNBA All-Star, was just one point below that.
But in the end, the lineup that included Fiebich emerged as the strongest team.
Stewart said the Liberty was able to avoid mismatches because Fivich is 6-foot-4 and all of the new starters are at least 6 feet tall.
Stewart can take over at guard in transition, Fiebic or Lainie Hamilton can take over Stewart's natural duties, and it's all good from there.
“It just sets the tone defensively,” Fivich said Tuesday. “If it plays out like it did last game, I think if we defend like that, it's going to be really tough for opponents.”
The lineup shift could have long-term ramifications, too: Fiebic has quickly transformed from bench firepower to a promising prospect.
Brondello would like to use Vandersloot as the Liberties' primary ball-handler for the second unit in the postseason, but he will become a free agent after this season and be 36 years old in 2025.
But now Brondello followed his analysis and his intuition, which led him to Fiebich.
“I think defense is the key to winning a championship,” Brondello said. “We need the best defensive line and I think we have that on our team.”
