The Liberty Look Like New York’s Next Champ — And the Yankees or Mets Could Be Next
NYC hasn't won a major pro sports title since 2011, but that could all change in a New York minute.
When the 2024 WNBA Finals tip off tonight between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx, the league’s two winningest teams this season will be facing off with legacies on the line. But if we zoom out even more, something else is also at stake in the series: the return of New York City’s status as a championship sports mecca.
Over its history, the New York metro area is the most successful in North America by total championships won, winning 57 titles between the Big Four men’s leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL) and the WNBA. No other city is especially close; for instance, even after Boston’s unbelievable success in the 21st century, they are still running nearly 20 championships behind their rivals to the south.
However, things haven’t gone quite as smoothly in the Big Apple recently. After winning six championships during the 1990s and adding six more from 2000-2011, no NYC team has won a title since Eli Manning and the 2011 New York Giants beat Tom Brady and the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI.
The drought since then — 13 years, and counting — is the longest for the New York metro area since the 16 years that passed between the 1905 New York Giants (yes, the baseball version of Da G-Men) and the 1921 Giants winning the World Series, and the second-longest drought overall in NYC history. No other championship-less stretch in between lasted longer than six years, and even that hadn’t happened since the time between the 1962 Yankees and 1968 Jets won it all.
In other words, New York sports haters have had an uncharacteristically good time recently. But that fun looks like it might be ending soon — very soon, possibly.
Despite these WNBA Finals being a No. 1 versus No. 2 battle by record, the Liberty are clear favorites to win. According to the implied odds from FanDuel, there’s a 70.4 percent chance that Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and company take care of the Lynx and bring New York its long-awaited first championship in 13 years.
And no matter what happens there, NYC will either have a fallback (if the Liberty lose) or a chance to pad their championship stats again in baseball. The Mets knocked off the Phillies on Wednesday to clinch a spot in the NLCS, while the Yankees outlasted the Royals to take a 2-1 lead in their own ALDS matchup. According to my Playoff Predictor model, the Yankees and Mets are now 2 of the 3 most likely World Series winners this year, with a combined 46 percent chance to win it all — and there’s also a 20 percent chance they meet in another Subway Series, the first since 2000 and just the second since 1956.
That’s just in the championships that will conclude in the next handful of weeks. By FanDuel’s accounting, NYC metro teams also have two of the six highest chances to win the Stanley Cup (Devils and Rangers) and the third-highest chance to win the NBA title (Knicks). There’s even still a 2.8 percent implied chance that the Jets win the Super Bowl, despite them confusingly firing coach Robert Saleh earlier this week.
If we add up all the total implied odds for each metro area to win each major sport’s next championship, New York City is easily No. 1 at the moment — running about 1 expected title above No. 2, the Minneapolis metro area:
I can already hear the rest of the country groaning: As if New York needed another reason to feel superior to everyone again. 🙄 But as someone who used to live there during most of the drought years — which included a few near-misses, such as the Mets’ 2015 World Series run — NYC has a really cool electricity when one of its teams is making a championship bid. Whether the Liberty prevail over the Lynx, the Mets or Yankees win the World Series, or the Knicks (oh man, the KNICKS) ever win another NBA title, New York is going to be a very fun place to celebrate if and when the title drought finally ends.