Welcome to Stew York.

Breanna Stewart will sign with the New York Liberty, she announced Wednesday, ending speculation that had run rampant since last offseason.

The 2018 WNBA MVP had narrowed her free agency options to the New York Liberty or the Seattle Storm. On the opening day of the signing period, she revealed her final decision.

“I decided to go to New York because I want to continue to be great,” Stewart said. “And I want to go to the place where I can help this league become better, to continue to raise the standard, and I feel like, why not go to the biggest market in all of sports?”

A year ago, the Liberty courted the 28-year-old forward, but she returned to the Storm for one last season with retiring legend Sue Bird. This time around, she made the leap, joining New York after spending her first six seasons in Seattle.

🗽 pic.twitter.com/6Sg28YnCPz

— Breanna Stewart (@breannastewart) February 1, 2023

Stewart had some fun with the free agency process. While playing for Turkish club Fenerbahçe during the WNBA offseason, she found time to post emoji-filled tweets, which fans scrambled to decipher.

With one such message, she revealed her four possible destinations. But after meeting with the Washington Mystics and the Minnesota Lynx, she honed in on the Liberty and the Storm as her top two.

New York did not hide its overtures to Stewart. Liberty coach Sandy Brondello, co-owner Clara Wu Tsai, general manager Jonathan Kolb and assistant general manager Ohemaa Nyanin all were spotted at a Fenerbahçe game last Wednesday in Istanbul. Even Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant got in on the action, making clear his desire to bring Stewart to the New York basketball scene.

The Liberty bolstered their case with a major trade earlier this month, acquiring Jonquel Jones from the Sun. During the introductory press conference for the 2021 MVP, Kolb said the team planned to be “very aggressive” in free agency.

The Storm selected Stewart with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 draft, and she won WNBA championships with the team in 2018 and 2020. Yet with Candace Parker announcing her decision to sign with the reigning WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces, a move to another burgeoning superteam on the East Coast proved enticing.

Stewart also made charter flights a key factor in her negotiations. The WNBA does not allow charter flights; teams must use commercial flights to travel to regular-season games.

Liberty owners Joe and Clara Wu Tsai have been at the forefront of advocating for changes to league travel accommodations. The team reportedly was fined $500,000 for chartering flights to away games during the second half of the 2021 season.

UEFA locked in the next steps in the path to the 2025/26 Champions League title last Friday, setting the matchups and schedule of the newly expanded UWCL league phase with the official draw.

Nine clubs battled through the competition's initial rounds to join the nine automatic qualifiers in the upcoming 18-team league phase.

This season's new format replaces the traditional group stage, in which teams previously faced three opponents twice.

Instead, while the 2025/26 season will see each qualified club again playing six total matches (three home and three away), they will do so against six different opponents — two from each of the three pods of teams.

The results from the league phase will then determine each team's placement in next year's knockouts.

With additional opponents on each team's docket, the new league phase is providing more top-tier matchups than the previous Champions League format.

Friday's draw set up elite fixtures with reigning champs Arsenal kicking off against French powerhouse OL Lyonnes while fellow heavy-hitter Barcelona faces Bayern Munich.

Later in the league phase, WSL side Manchester United will take on the newly fortified Paris Saint-Germain as well as OL Lyonnes, and Chelsea will meet 2024/25 semifinal foe Barcelona before capping their six matches against two-time UWCL winners Wolfsburg.

The first league phase matches kick off on October 7th before wrapping on December 17th, with the 18 European clubs still standing all eyeing a spot in next May's 2025/26 Champions League final in Oslo, Norway.

The Seattle Storm is cleaning house, opting to not renew the contract of head coach Noelle Quinn following the team's first-round exit from the 2025 WNBA Playoffs last Thursday.

"On behalf of our organization, I would like to thank Noelle for her time with the Storm," Seattle GM Talisa Rhea said in Sunday's announcement. "Her commitment to the ongoing success of our organization and to furthering the development of our players was second to none. She put us in a position to win at the highest levels of the game and, for that, we are grateful."

After winning the 2018 WNBA championship as a Seattle Storm player, Quinn joined the staff as an assistant coach before claiming another title as the team's associate head coach in 2020.

The Storm named Quinn head coach in May 2021 after her predecessor Dan Hughes stepped down due to health reasons — minting her the first-ever Black woman manager in Seattle history.

In her five-year tenure at the helm, Quinn led the Storm to four playoff appearances and logged the second-most wins of any coach in Seattle history, with the 40-year-old exiting the franchise with an overall record of 101-97.

In those four playoffs, Seattle only advanced past the first round in 2022, with the team going 4-8 in all postseason play under Quinn.

The Seattle Storm finished the 2025 WNBA regular season as the No. 7 seed on a 23-21 record before falling to the No. 2 Las Vegas Aces in the first round to cap their postseason run last week.

The No. 1 Kansas City Current officially clinched the 2025 NWSL Shield on Saturday, taking down the No. 6 Seattle Reign 2-0 to lift the 2021 expansion club's first-ever piece of league hardware.

"I thought that we won with a statement," said Current head coach Vlatko Andonovski after the match. "We showed that throughout the season we were the best team in the league."

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Kansas City is now the fastest Shield winner in NWSL history, claiming the hardware — and the postseason's top seeding — with five regular-season matches still remaining.

Needing a 16-point advantage atop the NWSL standings to secure the Shield over the weekend, Kansas City's Saturday win combined with Washington's Thursday draw with Angel City to put the second-place Spirit out of reach of the 2025 regular-season title.

The Current's dominance this year has the club riding a 17-2-2 overall record, racking up 14 straight results as Kansas City haven't lost a match since May 2nd and haven't conceded an NWSL goal since June 14th.

"It's just justification of all the work that we've done this year, and last year, too," added Andonovski. "We talked last year that we had a great season, and we said we were going to come out stronger.... We proved that we are a better team than last year and we are going to keep growing as we go forward."

Las Vegas star A'ja Wilson is the 2025 WNBA MVP, with the league announcing Sunday that the Aces forward earned her fourth career MVP award to set a new WNBA record.

Wilson received 51 of the media panel's 72 first-place votes, beating out fellow 2025 MVP finalists Napheesa Collier (Minnesota Lynx), Alyssa Thomas (Phoenix Mercury), Allisha Gray (Atlanta Dream), and Kelsey Mitchell (Indiana Fever).

"These are the moments that I'm like, 'No, this is why you wake up every morning and do what you do,'" Wilson said upon receiving the award.

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Previously named MVP in 2020, 2022, and 2024, Wilson's new 2025 trophy officially puts her ahead of retired WNBA legends and three-time winners Sheryl Swoopes, Lauren Jackson, and Lisa Leslie on the career MVP list.

Meanwhile, this year's win has Wilson joining former WNBA icon Cynthia Cooper as the league's second-ever back-to-back MVP.

En route to making history, the 29-year-old led the league in average points (23.4) and blocks per game (2.3) on the year, finishing second in rebounds per game (10.2) while playing much of the season's second half out of position as the the Aces' starting center.

"There's no Mt. Rushmore," Las Vegas head coach Becky Hammon told Wilson. "You are the only one — you're Everest."