The New York Liberty have a new head coach. As a result, the Golden State Warriors will lose a key member of Steve Kerr's staff at some point during the 2025-2026 NBA season.
Chris DeMarco was officially named the WNBA franchise's new coaching hire on Friday afternoon. Shortly after it was revealed that DeMarco would be taking the job, it was reported that Steph Curry carried some influence in the process.
"Sabrina Ionescu reached out to Steph Curry during this hiring process to get his thoughts on Chris DeMarco," ESPN's Anthony Slater reported on Friday.
Ionescu, the 27-year-old star point guard for the Liberty, has been close with Curry since she was starring at Oregon from 2016 to 2020. The two also competed against each other in a historic NBA-WNBA crossover event at the NBA All-Star weekend in 2024.
Seeing as though DeMarco is a longtime assistant for the Warriors in Golden State, where Curry spent his entire career, he knows the coach from a player's standpoint better than anybody. Ionescu must've received valuable information to take back to the Liberty's organization.
DeMarco heads to a Liberty squad that's primed for another title run. They just won the WNBA Championship in 2024. Coaching alongside a championship-winning head coach, running a roster full of stars over time, DeMarco has plenty of experience to bring to the table in New York. First, he'll have to wrap up his time with the Warriors.
"Chris DeMarco will be on the bench tonight, and I would say the near future," Slater reported. "Him and the Warriors are figuring out when his departure will be. It will be at some point during the season when they lose him. They are going to lose, basically, one of their defensive strategists. He's been the right-hand man for Mike Brown, Kenny Atkinson, and now Jerry Stackhouse, you know, strategizing the defense. It's not news that blindsided the Warriors. They were, in some ways, part of the hiring process."
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