Leaonna “Neah” Odom’s journey comes full circle in return to the Liberty

Odom, a second-year pro at the time, was often reserved and brief in her answers. “I wasn’t a big talker last year,” she said back in 2021 about her rookie year in Bradenton, Florida, the home of the WNBA bubble. 

When she was asked how the team’s identity was going to reflect the blue-collar reputation of New York City, she wasn’t sure how to answer the question. There was so much both she and her teammates didn’t know. 

Odom was just 23 years old at the time and was still trying to figure out how to exist as a professional — as was the franchise she was playing for. The Liberty were adjusting to their brand new home at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and were figuring out how they could establish themselves in the WNBA after years of irrelevance and underperformance. 

Four years and a WNBA championship later, Odom has returned to New York after years under the radar and away from professional basketball. Training camp represents the first time in three years she’s played organized 5-on-5 live pro basketball. 

“When you go from a team that’s just hoping to get more than five wins to come back into a team that has just won a championship, and now their goal is to build a dynasty, you can imagine the difference in energy and the atmosphere around here, like it’s totally a 180,” she told The Next. “It’s a complete shift.”

And like the franchise she has returned to, Odom too has a heightened sense of self and understands the type of player and person she wants to be. 

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The mysterious injury that just wouldn’t heal

After the Liberty hired current head coach Sandy Brondello at the end of the 2021 calendar year, New York leaned into more of a veteran presence, and to make room on the salary cap, younger players, especially those from the Liberty’s 2020 class had to be waived. Odom was one of them, but then pivoted quickly and signed a training camp contract with the Phoenix Mercury prior to the 2022 season. Before arriving in Phoenix, Odom signed with Ukraine Superleague team Kyiv Basket, and played in just six games before the season was stopped due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Months later back in the United States, Odom had a productive training camp and even started in the Mercury’s first preseason game. In 24 minutes, she scored 9 points on 3-8 shooting, had three rebounds and two steals. But in the final moments of the Mercury’s 82-78 loss to the Seattle Storm, she got hurt and re-aggravated a bone spur that kept her out for seven weeks of the 2021 season while with the Liberty. She missed 14 games that season after playing in every game of the shortened bubble season. 

Shortly after the injury in Phoenix, Odom was waived. At the time there was no state of the art practice facility, and the Mercury’s reputation as an organization had waned over the years under the leadership of now-former owner Robert Sarver.

Once her stint with the Mercury had ended, she needed to figure out next steps. How she was going to rehab? What would be the next phase of her career? Bone spurs often are treated without surgery and with a lot of physical therapy, but for Odom something was off. She just wasn’t getting better. Her health kept plateauing. 

“I got better but it didn’t quite get to the point where it felt good,” she said. “I got to a normal baseline with Phoenix and then it just kept happening again. I had to look into it a little bit more because it just kept happening.”

The unrelenting discomfort that she felt from the bone spur often felt like a rope was cutting against her foot. She returned to her native California and after seeing a specialist in Los Angeles, it was determined that Odom had a partial tear of her achilles and that the bone spur was fraying at the tendon. It was time to get surgery and repair her achilles, and in August 2022 that’s what she did. 

It is well documented around the WNBA how difficult achilles injuries and their corresponding surgeries are to recover and rehab from. It took Odom over two-and-a-half years to fully get cleared to play basketball again. After she took all of 2023 to recover, she still didn’t feel 100 percent. While the achilles healed and looked fine on the MRI, an ultrasound revealed something else. The scar tissue had been causing her discomfort, and as a result she had a Tenex Procedure done in June 2024 to remove the tissue. 

Getting the second procedure done was “pivotal” in her recovery, and Odom finally began to feel like herself again after years of uncertainty and frustration. 

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The desire to keep going and begin again

Odom was in limbo once Phoenix waived her, and while she was away from home in Southern California, being in Arizona reunited her with former Liberty assistant coach and now director of player personnel Dustin Gray. The two had bonded in the bubble and during the 2021 season. He was the coach on staff who often worked with her on her player development goals.

While Odom was trying to figure out her next step following being let go by the Mercury, Gray helped Odom rehab and get on the court when she needed to prior to getting her first surgery in the fall of 2022. Even when Odom relocated back to California following some time working with Gray in Phoenix, he would continue to check in. What stood out to Odom was Gray wouldn’t just ask her how she was doing physically, but rather took an interest in her full well-being including her mental health. He often encouraged her to keep going even when the mystery of her injuries and chronic pain got difficult to handle. 

In addition to the support from Gray, Odom rediscovered her love of the game when she became a volunteer coach for the varsity girls basketball team at Savanna High School in Anaheim, California. She met the head coach while she was lifting at a gym and she offered to help out. She felt a desire to give back. 

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Her days were structured where she would train, lift and go to physical therapy in the morning and then in the afternoon until the end of the day she would spend time with the girls. She kept stats from their practices and games, worked with the girls on their own player development and was a mentor who shared stories about her life as a collegiate athlete at Duke and then as a pro. 

Coaching the Savanna Rebels not only gave Odom a sense of routine while rehabbing from her multiple surgeries, but it also helped her self-actualize and find her voice as a leader and a communicator. Coaching the girls reminded her how much she missed being a part of a team, and she knew that her journey playing the game wasn’t over. 

Meanwhile the Liberty’s front office was monitoring Odom, and she was on their mind as someone they were considering bringing to training camp. 

When the Liberty drafted the Duke University alumna No. 15 overall, they were drawn to her guard-like athleticism at 6′2, defensive intangibles and general instincts for the game. Odom was known to be a player who cuts well, looks to pass and was comfortable making effort plays when her team needed them. New York also saw a smooth jumper that they believed with proper development focus and repetition could evolve into a respectable 3-point shot. 

During the bubble season she was lauded for her defensive prowess and even with quiet confidence told reporters she had a goal of one day being a defensive player of the year candidate. Her ceiling was on full display in the Liberty’s final regular season game in the bubble where Odom scored 20 points on 10-12 shooting along with three steals in the Liberty’s 82-79 loss to the Dallas Wings. 

Flashing forward back to now, New York was looking for another athletic wing that could lock down players on the perimeter, but also was switchable and long enough to guard players on the inside especially after losing Kayla Thornton to the expansion draft and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton to injury. The Liberty build their rosters like a “Noah’s Ark” and Odom’s frame and skillset resembles Leonie Fiebich, the Liberty’s breakout rookie from last season. 

Back in Febuary Gray posed the idea to Odom of potentially coming to Liberty training camp. She had sent him a training video she put together of how she was progressing following her multiple surgeries. “It was decent,” Odom said about the video. “It wasn’t like anything spectacular but it was like, ‘Hey I’m starting to feel good again.’”

She got cleared by her doctors to play in March, and as a result, the Liberty decided to bring her out to New York for some pre-camp workouts to see if she was in a position— having not played 5-on-5 in years— to work her way back into pro basketball and even compete for a roster spot. 

“We want[ed] to put her in a position to succeed,” Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb told The Next. “So we put her through a couple workouts, and honestly, we came away from those really impressed. We signed her to a training camp contract and brought her to camp.”

Does Odom have a chance at making the 2025 opening day roster?

Returning to New York was surreal for Odom. She saw some familiar faces in a sea of a ton of new. She got a warm welcome from Liberty head athletic trainer Terri Acosta, visited briefly with Laney-Hamilton and now is playing alongside Sabrina Ionescu once again after they came into the league together. 

Ionescu has taken an active role in making sure that Odom is comfortable in a completely new system that she has only had a little over a week to sit with. Unlike years ago, Odom hasn’t shied away from asking for clarification when she needs it. It’s a point of growth for Odom who previously hesitated to communicate.

“I think it’s been a growth process of understanding who she is and having the confidence to speak up, and it’s been exciting to kind of see that transition,” Ioenscu told The Next. “Obviously, I knew her from when she didn’t really talk and was really shy and quiet to who she is now, and I can see how she’s just grown as an individual.” 

Kolb has also been quite impressed with how Odom has been proactive in camp, asking questions and doing extra film work with new Liberty assistant Sonia Raman. Both Kolb and Ionescu have also observed a more consistent and confident 3-point shot.

A story I have kept my eyes on at Liberty training camp has been the return of Leaonna “Neah” Odom. Her journey to get back to #WNBA basketball has been fascinating. Here’s how she’s looked in camp. Story TK @thenext.bsky.social

— Jackie Powell (@classicjpow.bsky.social) 2025-05-05T15:04:56.053Z

Raman has been impressed with Odom’s pro habits especially after being away from the game for so long. After enduring two surgeries, Raman has noticed how seriously Odom takes her recovery after practice. She watches extra film before practice with Raman, and Odom is always asking to be sent more clips so she can study them in preparation for the next day of practice. 

While her comeback has clearly been impressive, it hasn’t been perfect. But those imperfections and how she’s handled them have also impressed the Liberty’s coaching staff.

“I think she’s giving herself grace to make mistakes and to learn from them, and to understand that it can’t be perfect,” Raman said. “And if you do everything with the idea of, ‘I have to do this perfectly to make the team,’ it’s not always the best approach to actually succeeding if it’s all outcome based. So, I think her being very process based has been really helpful for her as she’s trying to take these steps forward.”

Odom has approached this training camp without expectations. That approach has its ups and downs. She’s learning not only a brand new system, but she’s learning what her body is like following two surgeries. Sometimes she gets down on herself when she thinks about how the pre-surgery version of herself could have done something better. 

But the Liberty’s willingness to take a chance on a player who hasn’t played in about three years says something about the franchise’s creativity and care when it comes to player development in a league where limited cap space and limited roster spots make it difficult for franchises to simultaneously contend while maintaining a farm system. This is something that became apparent to Odom immediately.  

“I’m glad that I have a place where I can make those mistakes, learn who I am, figure out everything and still grow from it,” she said. “I think this is the best place to do that, because other teams, other systems, I think they would be more so caught up in trying to win, that they wouldn’t have the chance to help somebody out. … But this team, I feel like they know who they are, and they have the ability to help. They have the ability to spread themselves and give to others.”

The possibility that Odom makes this opening day roster might not be so far-fetched. On Saturday, Kolb told reporters that the team will “more likely than not” suspend Laney-Hamilton’s contract, which opens up another roster spot. Odom will most likely battle it out between sophomore guard Jaylyn Sherrod and 2024 second-round draft pick Esmery Martínez for the team’s final spot.

And even if Odom doesn’t make the final 12 before the first game of the regular season, New York could bring her back in June when Fiebich, Marine Johannès and Nyara Sabally will be away from the team for weeks competing in EuroBasket with their respective national teams.

While Odom would revel in any WNBA opportunity, she’s actively trying to seize the one she has right now. 

“If you don’t go through those moments of ugly and those battles of trials and tribulations, you wouldn’t know what it would feel like to be on the other side,” she said. “And I feel like this is why it’s such a full-circle moment to be able to be a part of this, regardless of what happens here. To see what it looks like to be around a championship-mentality team, to have veterans who know what they know, know what their goals are, know who they are, what their identity is within the league. It’s an amazing thing to see, to be a part of and to soak up that energy.”

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