90 seconds before the end of the second final game of the North American professional basketball league WNBA between the New York Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx, Leonie Fiebich takes heart. A quick look at the basket, a throw from the three-point line, and shortly afterwards the ball rushes through the net. New York’s lead grows again to nine points, at a psychologically important time. “Crunch time,” as they say in the USA.
Previously, her team had almost lost a lead in front of a record crowd of 18,040 spectators – like in the first final game, when New York gave up an 18-point lead and lost 93:95 in overtime. This time, however, Leonie Fiebich had something against it and ensured that the score was 1-1 after two games in the WNBA finals series. Three wins are necessary for the championship title, so there can be a maximum of five games.
Rocky road to the WNBA
The Germans’ steep rise was by no means foreseeable before the season. When Fiebich made her debut with the New York Liberty, she was a blank slate, a nobody who until then had received little attention from her opponents. A big mistake, as it quickly became clear. Fiebich took advantage of her freedom more and more often and became an important part of her team.
“At the beginning, nobody knew me,” said the 24-year-old on Deutschlandfunk. “That was really cool, I was able to play to my strengths a little bit. Nobody knew that I could throw the ball quite well.” The 1.93 meter tall winger is now in the spotlight and is well on her way to winning the championship in her first WNBA season. The New York Liberty are favorites against the Minnesota Linx, and Fiebich is a regular player.
The path to the North American professional league was anything but straight for the German international. At the age of 14, she played for her hometown club DJK Landsberg – in addition to her youth appearances – and for the first women’s team in one of the lower German leagues. From the small, tranquil Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria to the global metropolis of New York? “Yeah, that sounds like a good storyline, right?” says Fiebich. “But it wasn’t like that. I had a lot of stops in between. The amount of work that went into it was and is very strenuous.”
Fiebich: “They had no use for me”
Fiebich played for former German series champions TSV Wasserburg in 2020 when the Los Angeles Sparks secured the rights to her. However, she was not used once during the season and was transferred to the Chicago Sky. But there was literally silence there too. Neither the Sparks nor Chicago even attempted to contact her. “They probably had no use for me,” Fiebich said some time ago, looking back. “So they acted like I wasn’t even part of it.”
Instead of going to the WNBA, her path first led via the French Ardennes and the Les Flammes Carolo Basket club to the Warwick Senators in Perth, Australia, and finally to Spain to Basket Zaragoza. Fiebich was named Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the Spanish league twice in a row before being called up by the New York Liberty.
After a short period of getting used to it, the German got better and better and is now convincing across the board with her third WNBA team. Most recently, she was even elected to the WNBA’s All-Rookie Team, making her one of the five best newcomers in the US women’s professional league. In the regular season, Fiebich achieved a so-called plus-minus value of +7.0 per game, meaning: with her on the field, her team was an average of seven points better than its opponents. “I have worked my way up and am a starter in the playoffs,” Fiebich told the ARD Sportschau with satisfaction. After all, there are “a lot” of Europeans in the WNBA who “hardly get any playing time.”
Selfless and calm
Teammates and coaches are also enthusiastic about the explosion in performance of the Germans, who were also one of the strongest players in the German national team at the Olympic Games in Paris. Fiebich is selfless, says Liberty star Breanna Stewart: “She really does everything so that her team has a chance to win.” Three-time WNBA All-Star player Sabrina Ionescu also raves about Fiebich. “She is probably our best thrower,” said Ionescu on the sidelines of the WNBA finals series. “The fact that she plays like that as a rookie and puts herself at the service of the team is really impressive.”
New York coach Sandy Brondello particularly appreciates Fiebich’s composure and her consistent performance. “Nothing fazes them,” Brondello said after the WNBA quarterfinals. “That’s what we love about her. Whether it’s the regular season or the playoffs, she always brings the same mentality.”
Even Becky Hammon, coach of the defeated semi-final opponents Las Vegas Acers, is enthusiastic about the German. “I love Fiebich, I’m a big fan,” said Hammon, particularly praising Fiebich’s defensive quality: “She’s close enough to the opponent that you can’t just throw the ball over her, but at the same time far enough away that you can’t just can dribble past her and she is deadly [bei Würfen – Anm. d. Red.] from the three-point line.” An assessment that can also be proven by numbers. Fiebich’s three-point rate in the regular WNBA season was 43.3 percent. That was the second-best value for a league rookie in the league’s 27-year history.
Now Leonie Fiebich, together with her club and national teammate Nyara Sabally, could become the second German to win the championship in the best women’s basketball league in the world. Only Marlies Askamp, who lifted the coveted trophy with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2002, had ever achieved this.
