What will Natasha Cloud bring to the 2025 New York Liberty?

After trading two first-round picks for her, the New York Liberty are going to lean on Natasha Cloud in 2025. What is that going to look like?

In Game 1 of the Phoenix Mercury’s unsurprising defeat to the Minnesota Lynx in the first round of the WNBA Playoffs, the Mercury did shock the world by coming back from a 23-point first-half deficit.

The Lynx would ultimately take care of business, but not before the Mercury, led by Natasha Cloud, put a hell of a scare into them.

Her best play of the night, though, did not lead to any of her career-high-tying 33 points. (Liberty fans will remember the first time she scored 33.)

Rather, Cloud switched off of Napheesa Collier and onto Courtney Williams, contained a drive and stripped her, then pushed the ball the other way before diming Natasha Mack up on the inside. Sadly, an easy layup slipped through Mack’s hands and out of bounds…

This is exactly the Natasha Cloud the New York Liberty, having traded two first-round picks for her in the offseason, are hoping to see in 2025.

Unlike the 2024 Phoenix Mercury, New York likely won’t ask her to match up with Napheesa Collier when they play the Lynx. But Cloud, at 5’10”, started most possessions last postseason on the MVP-level forward, though would switch onto Minnesota’s guards in most screening actions.

Cloud has made an All-Defensive team three times in her WNBA career, and it’s easy to see why. She can slither through screens and will poke at active dribbles, making her an obvious nightmare for opposing guards but a potential irritant even for forwards like Collier.

In Game 2 of the Liberty’s battle with the Washington Mystics in 2023, Cloud took Sabrina Ionescu out of the game. Not only did she score just 11 points on 11 shots, but Head Coach Sandy Brondello admitted, “In the end, it was, ‘Don’t even come near the ball, you’re a decoy right now.’”

Cloud recently turned 33 years old, and likely can’t give the Liberty 44 games of full-throttle ball-pressure. But, on a team where her offensive burden will be lighter, there should be long stretches where she can put an opposing guard in jail.

This should give Brondello some defensive optionality. While the Liberty will still switch plenty of actions, as they did in 2024, Cloud is a true point-of-attack defender, more so than Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, out for the season. Laney-Hamilton, and the retuning Leonie Fiebich, are excellent defenders, but because of their size, fairly screenable. Cloud is not, and on the right day, can slide her feet with any WNBA guard.

Offensively, she is at her best pushing in transition, as in the above clip. The Pennsylvania native has serious north-to-south speed, and New York certainly hopes she can use it to free up her new backcourt partner for some easy looks…

Though Sabrina Ionescu excelled as a primary ball-handler last year, allowing Fiebich to take Courtney Vandersloot’s place in the starting lineup, she saw fewer open catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts than she did when playing next to Vandersloot in 2023.

Cloud played last season next to the prolific Diana Tarausi, and there should be some carry-over for her this season, playing next to another great shooter: “What I loved about playing with DT, and Sab, was that I get to take a little bit of weight off of their shoulders by being able to get into the paint, engaging two [defenders], and then finding them as they’re moving and creating easy shots for them.”

Will she actually be able to draw two defenders is the question? Assuming there’s no great drop-off in burst — always a worry for a 33-year-old guard — the answer should be yes. Even though playoff defenses will likely go under her ball-screens, this is nothing new for Cloud, and she’s found ways in the past to get to the rack anyway…

Cloud has hovered in the low-30s as a 3-point shooter for much of her career, though anecdotally, it feels better than that. She hit five 3-pointers, including a few off the dribble, against New York in that huge Game 2 in 2023. By the end of the night, defenders were flying at her pump-fakes, and allowing her to get all the way to the rim or to the mid-range area, where she’s more comfortable.

In a 5-out offense, Cloud is not a liability shooting threes, but she certainly projects to be the starting lineup’s weakest shooter, no great disgrace next to Ionescu, Fiebich, Breanna Stewart, and Jonquel Jones.

Natasha Cloud is no stranger to playing on loaded offensive teams, though. She starred for the 2019 Washington Mystics, WNBA champion and one of the elite offensive teams in the history of the league, posting paltry 39/32/68 splits.

Yet, those Mystics led the league in 3-point attempts and makes, using the threat of the long-ball to lead the league in 2-point percentage while Cloud operated as the lead ball-handler for 32 minutes a night.

On the 2025 New York Liberty, she should be halfway between 2023 Courtney Vandersloot and 2024 Betnijah Laney-Hamilton. Is this a simplistic way of looking at basketball? Definitely.

However, she should bring a mix of switchable defense as well as true point-of-attack tenacity. Cloud isn’t the shooter Laney-Hamilton is, but unlike the veteran Vandersloot, she should be able to draw consistent closeouts and make enough open looks to keep the machine chugging.

And while she isn’t the table-setter Vandersloot was in 2023, she will be able to lighten the load on Sabrina Ionescu, re-instituting assisted looks into the All-Star’s shot diet. In the same vein, Cloud should also make a nice backcourt partner for Marine Johannès.

The New York Liberty have a different path to the championship in 2025. Besides a significantly changed offense, two of their defensive-minded wings are gone, Laney-Hamilton to injury and Kayla Thornton to the expansion draft. Leonie Fiebich is in the starting lineup from the jump now, and is one of three rotation regulars departing for EuroBasket in June.

Perhaps the biggest change is Natasha Cloud, though. She was the star acquisition of the New York Liberty offseason, a booming personality and accomplished pro that cannot just come along for the ride in 2025, but must close playoff games for them, handle the ball in crunch-time, and defend the opponent’s best perimeter player.

It’ll be different in 2025. But if Natasha Cloud is up to the task, that’s not a bad thing.