I Think My Favorite WNBA Team Is Cursed

When you love someone, you have to be honest with them, and only then can the relationship flourish—so it’s time to have a heart to heart with my beloved New York Liberty, a should-be championship caliber women’s basketball team that appears to be taking the path of the Knicks. While I am certainly not a basketball expert by any stretch of the imagination, I am intimately familiar with curses, and that knowledge combined with watching the Liberty this season has brought me to the conclusion that the Liberty is cursed.

Perhaps you are a long time fan of the Liberty and think that they can’t possibly be cursed, because historically they’ve not been at the top of the pack and everything happening is par for the course. But this season was supposed to be the season. The Liberty had the first pick in the draft and used it wisely to secure Sabrina Ionescu. They were rebuilding with strong, hungry rookies and this was supposed to be the year that youth made a stand against experience.

But none of that happened, because the team is fucking cursed. Kylee Shook, Kia Nurse, and Ionescu were hit with varying degrees of ankle injuries, leaving Layshia Clarendon and Amanda Zahui B to essentially carry the team on their own.

And yet here were are, with the Liberty ranked 12th in a league that consists of 12 teams, having won only two of the last 17 games they played. Who is to blame here?

The answer is clear. The curse can only be coming from the one person who has been suspiciously absent the entire 2020 season: Maddie the Liberty’s mascot.

I first met Maddie when I was but a child in Madison Square Garden at my first Liberty game. I knew then, when I looked into her wide penetrating eyes, that she was a powerful being. In accordance with covid-19 regulations, Maddie has been barred from attending Liberty games and as such has had a lot of time to reflect and think about all the ways she’s been wronged. It is my belief that this vengeful being laid a curse upon her own team to remind them how much they need her. Maddie, please, I beg you, lift this curse. The fans need you.