June 6, 2025
Why Natasha Cloud’s transition to the Liberty has looked seamless
Cloud's transition to the Liberty has made her a better player in 2025
When Natasha Cloud was properly introduced to the Barclays Center crowd in 2023 — the first year of Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones on the same team in New York — the ideas she was motivated by were that she wasn’t recognized enough and that she didn’t get the respect that she believes she deserves.
Continue reading with a subscription to The Next
Get unlimited access to women’s basketball coverage and help support our hardworking staff of writers, editors, and photographers by subscribing today.
Already a member?
Login
That narrative continued after she put on a show defending future teammate Sabrina Ionescu and scoring 33 points in the process. The 2023 Mystics lost to the 2023 Liberty in the first round of the playoffs, and what followed was that Cloud wrote her own story, proclaiming to the world how she ought not be overlooked.
Months later, it continued when she signed with the Phoenix Mercury in the offseason. The Mystics called an audible and decided to move on without Cloud. In the aftermath of the trade, she explained that the whole situation made her feel like she was being “fired on her off-day” after she had been on a vacation.
While in Phoenix, she spoke about feeling “villainized” for the passion she played with in her final years in Washington. Then, there came the trade to Connecticut this past offseason so that the Mercury could land Alyssa Thomas. Cloud was confident that the Mercury had embraced her for her talents and who she is, but then she was shipped off.
Last season in Phoenix, she averaged 11.5 points on 10.1 field goal attempts per game while shooting 39.7% from the field and contributing 6.9 assists per game. It wasn’t her best output. The Mercury narrowly made it to the postseason, much like the Mystics did in 2023, and Cloud went off again, scoring 33 points in the Mercury’s first postseason game. But the Mercury, like the Mystics, failed to move on to the next round.
Save 30% when you order “Becoming Caitlin Clark”
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
Click the link below to order and enter MEGDAL30 at checkout.
How would all of that recent history come into play on the Liberty, a team that has championship aspirations once again and that is known for its array of selfless superstars who aren’t as concerned about their individual stats?
“I’m just happy to be in a system again,” Cloud said after the Liberty’s 100-52 beatdown of the Connecticut Sun on June 1. “I think I’ve said it in some of my other interviews since that 2019 [title-winning Mystics] team, I haven’t had a team like this. So it’s refreshing to get back to it, because this is truly the way that I love to play basketball, and I feel like the game should be played.”
That happiness has translated into some of Cloud’s most impressive statistical on-court feats. Fully buying into Liberty’s style of play and culture has yielded Cloud the highest net, offensive and defensive ratings among all guards who have played over 25 minutes per game. She has also posted the third-best assist percentage and assist-to-turnover ratio among that group.
“Sometimes you just gotta go to a team and it’s a perfect fit,” head coach Sandy Brondello said about Cloud on May 29.
How has Cloud adapted to a brand new team with an established set of offensive and defensive principles carefully constructed by Brondello and her husband, assistant Olaf Lange? And how has Cloud’s vivacious and strong-willed personality played out on a roster that worked long and hard on an egalitarian style team culture? These were all questions raised following the Liberty’s decision to acquire her this past March.
Following training camp and almost ten regular-season games, Cloud’s transition to playing on one of the best teams in the league has looked close to seamless. The Liberty have jumped out to the team’s best start in franchise history at 8-0, and Cloud has helped fuel the team to new heights less than a month into the 2025 WNBA season.
Tune in to Locked On Women’s Basketball
Here at The Next, in addition to the 24/7/365 written content our staff provides, we also host the daily Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast. Join us Monday through Saturday each week as we discuss all things WNBA, collegiate basketball, basketball history and much more. Listen wherever you find podcasts or watch on YouTube.
How Cloud emphasizes getting to know her teammates
Cloud explained to reporters at the beginning of training camp how grateful she was for the Liberty to actively pursue her in the trade market like they did and, in a sense, “save her” from what could have been a very different reality in Connecticut.
But what Cloud didn’t initially make clear was all of the work she had already done behind the scenes to get herself acclimated to a completely new basketball world. Cloud has been told by the Liberty coaching staff ad nauseam that they want her to be herself, but at the same time, she realized that in order to set herself up successfully for this new opportunity, she had to put some more work in.
With that in mind, Cloud arrived in New York a whole month before training camp. She took the opportunity to get settled in at her new Brooklyn apartment, acclimate to the expectations of the coaching staff, and learn what role she was expected to play. Part of her rationale for arriving early was also to be well acclimated to how the Liberty practice, lift and get treatment. She wanted to be caught up to speed by the time the rest of the returners got back to New York.
“How to play with [Jones], how to play with [Stewart], how to play with Sab[rina] Ionescu,” she said about her pre-training camp days. “I got a little bit more of a cheat code with [Ionescu], with playing in [the 3×3 league] Unrivaled together, but, yeah, I went through some growing pains for about a month of it. That was the point of getting here early.”
While Cloud stands out because of how she communicates and radiates constant energy, she didn’t want to stand out because she was unprepared for what it means to play for the Liberty. This was all work she had done prior to camp opening on April 27.
Want even more women’s sports in your inbox?
Subscribe now to our sister publication The IX and receive our independent women’s sports newsletter six days a week. Learn more about your favorite athletes and teams around the world competing in soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers.
Readers of The Next now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.
But Cloud was also doing other work. She was putting together her own personal psychological profiles of her teammates. Cloud is an empath by nature and wanted to be able to connect with her teammates on a deeper level. Isabelle Harrison, Cloud’s girlfriend and teammate on the Liberty, told The Next that for as loud as Cloud is, she’s an observer and a keen one at that. “She’s very intentional about getting to know people, their character before basketball even plays a part,” Harrison said.
It looks different depending on the player. For Stewart, Cloud pokes fun at her by showing the internet what glamorous bag Stewart brings to work each day. Cloud and Stewart also both adore Meek Mill’s hit “Dreams and Nightmares.”
Cloud makes sure to ask Ionescu all about her husband, Hroniss Grasu. For Jones, both she and Cloud bond over music, their shared experiences living in Washington D.C. and the fact that they are both masculine presenting queer Black women.
Cloud often participates in TikToks with Kennedy Burke, trying the best she can to fill the void left by Golden State Valkyrie Kayla Thornton. Marine Johannès, who is much more reserved than Cloud, still has a special handshake with her. When Cloud was encouraging the team to bark like dogs in training camp, she explained that she’s not forcing anyone like Johannès who might not want to participate. Cloud is very adamant about meeting her teammates where they are.
“I take time with my teammates,” she said. “I have conversations with them. I think I’m an empath, so I can feel when somebody’s aura or energy is off or shifted … Then it’s a question of, ‘Are you good?’ And I’m not talking about the basketball player, I’m talking about the human being, because life goes on.”
This philosophy was ingrained in her since her days in Washington alongside former player development director Sefu Bernard, who has since joined Eric Thibault in Minnesota in the same role for the Lynx. Bernard used a bank metaphor to illustrate how players need to show up for their teammates as people first, and that’s how trust is built.
“You have to make deposits into your teammates in order to make withdrawals when it counts on the court,” Cloud said about the metaphor. “And so all those deposits that I put into my teammates are so, when it is time to withdraw from the ATM, I can do it on the court, and they won’t hear my tone. They won’t hear anything of the heat of the moment. They’ll know that I care very deeply about them as human first before I ever care about a basketball player.”
How the Liberty play allow Cloud to be at her best
Interpersonal connections are vital to success on the court, but the basketball itself has suited Cloud’s game particularly well. With Betnijah Laney-Hamilton out for the year, the Liberty had a guard/wing role that needed to be filled. New York needed a defensive stopper and someone who was switchable but also nimble at the point of attack. That’s Cloud.
Offensively, Cloud has also fit right in. While Ionescu chalks part of it up to the pair’s familiarity playing together in Unrivaled, Ionescu revealed that Cloud’s understanding of what’s needed of her has also made a difference. Cloud has internalized that she will have more space to operate while opposing defenses will be so consumed with Ionescu, Stewart and Jones. And Cloud’s knack for getting downhill serves as a decoy to defenses. There’s a reason the Liberty have tied and broken the WNBA’s record for made threes in a game this season.
“It’s just a really free-flowing offense, and I feel like that helps players like [Cloud], who is just so great at reading and reacting,” Ionescu told reporters. “And it’s just like a player-led offense, and I think that’s why she does so well. It’s because she’s just not put in a box of like, this is the only thing you can do. It’s like, go out there and be a basketball player. Read, make the right play for the team, and then you can go out there and score and average 20 [points] a night.”
Ionescu was referencing how Cloud started the season, averaging 18.7 points per game in her first three games as a Liberty. While her scoring totals have gone down in the last few games, that doesn’t mean she’s not contributing at a high level. Positionless basketball can also translate to doing something a point guard isn’t always expected to do. Cloud has mastered effectively screening for her teammates, leading to Stewart, Jones and Ionescu getting open drives to the basket.
Assistant coach Lange explained that Cloud’s initial scoring burst came as a result of the unpredictability that comes with the Liberty’s tweaked offense. “That’s just the way the ball rolls,” he told The Next. “We have a very free-flowing offense, the more positionless, and sometimes less predictability and less control. And then the ball comes to you, and [Cloud] was ready.”
Contrary to Cloud’s years in Phoenix and final years in Washington, Brondello has remarked that there are times when Cloud is too selfless and needs to take a shot and score for herself when that’s the best and most open look available. While Cloud is a career 31.1% three-point shooter, so far in eight games for New York, she’s shooting the ball from deep at 35.5%, a moderately improved clip.
“She has good technique,” Brondello said. “I think when she rushes it, the percentage goes down. I’ve watched her in these few weeks that I have coached her. But like I said, she’s going to be open.”
The Next, a 24/7/365 women’s basketball newsroom
The Next: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX. 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff and dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.
Is this what Cloud has always wanted?
Being on the Liberty has, in a way, given Cloud what she always wanted: a space to be recognized for how she plays the game. Her days of exclaiming to the world that she’s an underrated player or deserves more recognition are now few and far between simply because of her current situation. Being on the Liberty allows for more people to see what Cloud can do rather than what she can’t do.
Cloud doesn’t have to constantly bang the drum anymore about her abilities as a two-way point guard because the WNBA intelligentsia is able to see her value much more clearly than previously in her career. When Cloud has played through her strengths so far this season, the results have come. As of now, her assist-to-turnover ratio, assist percentage and net rating are all higher than they were back in 2019, her championship season with the Mystics.
Cloud went on a gauntlet of podcasts, including ours, this past winter, discussing how she wants to be the best version of herself that she can be. Maybe this is what it looks like: helping a championship-level team start 8-0 while not having to carry an unrealistic offensive load.
She has spoken at length about how her goal on this team is to make it better, and how that is accomplished in a variety of ways. It might be guarding someone like Caitlin Clark and turning her over. It might be finding Stewart, Jones or Ionescu in their kill zones. It might also be Cloud putting her head down and getting to the line when there’s no other way to generate offense.
The Liberty wouldn’t be in the position they are without Cloud: undefeated and breaking a slew of league records. But, at the same time, Cloud wouldn’t be in a position to flourish to this degree without the Liberty.
“This is about providing for my family at the end of the day,” Cloud said. “So I’m super focused this season, especially with this new CBA coming up in the future. It’s a big moment. So not only for collectively, us as a team, but individually, when I go home, and I go home to that home, there’s a home that I gotta provide for too.”
Written by Jackie Powell
Jackie Powell covers the New York Liberty for The Next and hosts episodes of Locked on Women's basketball where she explores national women's basketball stories. She also has covered women's basketball and the culture of the sport for Bleacher Report, Sports Illustrated, MSNBC, Yahoo Sports, Harper's Bazaar and SLAM. She also self identifies as a Lady Gaga stan, is a connoisseur of pop music and is a mental health advocate.
