Liberty look to Shavonte Zellous to boost backcourt

NEW YORK -- The text messages started arriving over the winter.

"You coming?" was the phrase Tina Charles sent most often to free agent Shavonte Zellous.

Charles, a WNBA All-Star center, had turned into a recruiter. She was looking for a player to help fill the sizeable void left by injured New York Liberty guard Epiphanny Prince.

"If we needed another option, I would've loved for it to be Shavonte," Charles said.

Eventually, Charles' text messages won Zellous over.

The Indiana Fever veteran agreed to a free-agent deal with the Liberty in the offseason. Her familiarity with head coach Bill Laimbeer and associate head coach Katie Smith, as well as Charles' prodding, helped lead Zellous to New York.

"You appreciate little things like that," Zellous said of Charles' texts.

The Liberty hope Zellous and others can offset the loss of Prince, the club's second-leading scorer last season who will miss most of 2016 as she continues to recover from a torn right ACL. Prince was one of the key components of the Liberty's success last season, when the club was one win shy of a trip to the WNBA Finals.

"There are very few players in our league, if any, who have the perimeter game that Epiphanny has," Liberty president Isiah Thomas said. "We won't be able to replace her."

So when Prince -- who averaged 15.0 points in the 2015 regular season -- went down with a torn ACL in November, it changed the calculus for the Liberty.

Zellous, though, is one part of a formula that the Liberty hope can keep them on course during Prince's absence. Drafted out of college in 2009 by Laimbeer when he was still coaching in Detroit, Zellous averaged 8.4 points last season during Indiana's run to the WNBA Finals.

In addition to Zellous, New York acquired All-Star point guard Shoni Schimmel via trade, signed guard Lindsey Harding and re-signed 6-foot-6 center Carolyn Swords in the offseason. The club will likely need significant contributions from all three to return to the Eastern Conference finals.

"I don't think anyone can make up for Epiphanny," Charles said. "I think they just have to be themselves."

The Liberty are also counting on the growth of second-year players Brittany Boyd (6.6 PPG, 2.7 RPG and 2.3 APG in the 2015 regular season) and Kiah Stokes (5.8 PPG, 6.4 RPG, 2.0 BPG).

Stokes helped anchor New York's league-leading defense (the Liberty allowed a WNBA-low 71.1 points per game in 2015), but Laimbeer is looking for Stokes to score more frequently in the post this season.

The coach would also like Boyd to push the ball more often to create easier looks in transition. New York made 42.6 percent of its field goal attempts in 2015, a percentage Laimbeer would like to increase.

Any improvement on offense, though, will be challenging without Prince. As Thomas notes, the Liberty might need an increase in scoring from Charles during Prince's absence.

"And the Olympian will," Thomas said of Charles, who averaged 17.1 points and 8.5 rebounds last season. "We'll just have to find different ways to try to win."

More points from the perimeter are part of that new equation. The hope is that Schimmel, acquired Monday in a trade for the Liberty's 2017 second-round pick, can help in this area.

Schimmel made 38 percent of her 3-point attempts last season, which was seven percent higher than the Liberty shot as a team in 2015.

A two-time All-Star, Schimmel also gives the Liberty added depth in the backcourt. That was an issue for the club late last season and in the playoffs, when Boyd was sidelined with a wrist injury.

"We just didn't have enough when she went down," Thomas said.

Now the Liberty have plenty in the backcourt and plenty inside. But do they have enough to compensate for Prince's absence?

"We know the system, we know what we're trying to get accomplished," Laimbeer said. "Now it's about taking it to the next level."