The Liberty's WNBA championship run has motivated the successful NYU and Columbia programs to keep up their excellence.

A title had been a long time coming for the Liberty, one of the few remaining original WNBA franchises and the only one absent a championship. The team finally took home a crown after losses in its five prior trips to the finals and brought the city its first basketball title in four decades.

A franchise that, not that long ago, was toiling in the suburbs of New York City in front a few thousand people, at best, but has ridden the surge of WNBA popularity to achieve superteam status and collect some of the most talented players on the planet, is now the 2024 WNBA champion.