Before the Germany women’s basketball team assembled for the Olympics, Lisa Thomaidis made a trip to New York City.
She had watched Leonie Fiebich — a key piece of her country’s roster for its inaugural Summer Games appearance — from home, tuning in and noticing that Fiebich’s WNBA transition included flashes of what the 24-year-old rookie could become.
But during her trip to Brooklyn, during the games against the Sparks on June 20 and 22, Thomaidis sensed the “prominent role” Fiebich was starting to fill.
Those were the first two games where Betnijah Laney-Hamilton wasn’t in the lineup with a knee injury that would eventually require a minor procedure.
Those were the first glimpses of Fiebich starting for the Liberty, and the early returns across those games were promising.
The extended minutes. The involvement at both ends of the court. The made shots. They were more than flashes.
That served as the foundation for a 15-game stretch in which Fiebich became an indispensable Liberty piece and one of the WNBA’s top rookies not named Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese.
The Liberty were 11-0 in games with Fiebich in the starting lineup entering Saturday’s clash with the Sun at Barclays Center.
She leads all WNBA starters with an average plus-minus of plus-15.4, per the team.
And in their most recent win, Fiebich fought through a rib injury to finish with a career-high 16 points.
“She’s a realist, right, and so she knows where she sits,” Thomaidis told The Post. “She knows what her role is. She knows who’s in front of her. She knows what she’s there to do, and then when they, I think a lot of it is just like when preparation meets opportunity. She’s prepared, and the opportunity arose with some injuries and then she was ready to just slide in there and do what she does.”
The dots that connected for Fiebich to end up with the Liberty didn’t involve a high draft pick or a blockbuster trade or a splash in free agency.
It all started in 2020, when the Sparks took Fiebich in the second round.
She didn’t know much about the WNBA. She just knew that she was drafted, that Los Angeles possessed her rights and that “nothing really happened,” she said.
“The communication wasn’t great,” Fiebich told The Post of her time with the Sparks and then the Sky following a 2021 trade. “So it might sound harsh, but I didn’t really care where my rights were gonna be at that stage. And then when they got to New York and they really started to, like, communicate with me and my agent. … So that was the time where I was like, ‘OK, cool, now I actually have like a franchise that I can connect to.’
“Before, I didn’t really pay attention to it, honestly.”
When the Liberty acquired her in a four-team deal last year, they were excited.
“It’s not everyday you get a 6-foot-4, athletic, perimeter player,” head coach Sandy Brondello said.
Thomaidis had the same reaction when she first watched Fiebich’s film after taking over Germany’s roster last year, and a concoction of length, strength, stature and frame “just really set her apart.”
On a team that already contained Wings star Satou Sabally, Fiebich also found a way to stand out.
She sank a game-tying shot with 0.4 seconds left in a EuroBasket game — which Germany eventually won in overtime — last year to give her country a chance to eventually qualify for the Olympics.
It was a “monumental shot” in Germany’s history of women’s basketball, Thomaidis said.
And once Germany got to Paris last month, Fiebich collected 16 points to help Germany topple Belgium in the opening game. Fiebich’s strides with the Liberty had translated to the Olympics stage.
Fiebich said she didn’t decide too far in advance that 2024 was when she’d make the leap to the WNBA, But now, after her emergence, it has created a potential dilemma.
Brondello expects Laney-Hamilton — their defensive anchor — to return to the lineup Monday.
Fiebich will likely return to the bench, but said she doesn’t care about starting.
At the very least, though, she has played her way into a critical role down the stretch on the WNBA stage. She’ll remain a “cornerstone” of Germany’s roster, in the eyes of Thomaidis, on the international one, too.
“I think her stock, like I said, is only gonna rise,” Thomaidis said. “It’s only gonna increase. And I think a lot of teams are seeing her value.”
