The Las Vegas Aces made it look so easy for so long during their record-setting romp to a second straight championship that it was only fitting they were made to finish it the hard way. Down two starters and trailing the New York Liberty by double digits in the third quarter of Wednesday night’s Game 4 of the WNBA finals, the Aces appeared on course for a second straight defeat and a winner-take-all fifth game on Friday back in Las Vegas. They were on wobbly legs, their ball movement sloppy and error-strewn, given no quarter by a deafening crowd of 16,851 hostile spectators in a building where they’d lost each of three previous visits this year by an average margin of 20 points.
Then it came, more of a trickle than a deluge, but steady just the same. A running jumper by offensive dynamo Jackie Young. Back-to-back three-pointers by Cayla George, the former MVP of Australia’s WNBL making her first career playoff start. Nine straight points from A’ja Wilson, the world’s best player today no doubt inspired by her MVP slight. Two quick baskets from veteran wing Alysha Clark in the closing minute. All of a sudden the undermanned Aces led by two entering the fourth and would never trail again, finally celebrating their 70-69 victory in a mob at center court before a silenced arena after a last-gasp shot by New York’s Courtney Vandersloot missed the target.
“All we did is buckle down and keep playing. That was our mantra: keep playing,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said. “This is a testament that your character, it will be like your culture. And if you have bad character, you don’t have that culture. And we had plenty of time to fall apart. But because of their character and the culture we built, you can’t crack this group. You just can’t.”
The unflappable Wilson, who racked up with 24 points and 16 rebounds on Wednesday and was the runaway choice for WNBA finals Most Valuable Player, is the bandleader of the next great American sports dynasty. Denied a third regular-season MVP trophy by New York’s Breanna Stewart in one of the closest races ever, the 6ft 4in forward was as dominant as ever in the playoffs, averaging 23.8 points (on 55.4% shooting), 11.8 rebounds and 2.3 blocked shots as the Aces won all but one of their nine contests. Their much-hyped clash of the superteams in the finals was largely a mismatch.
Simply put, these Aces are one of the best teams ever seen in men’s or women’s basketball, at least since the Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors. Surely the numbers support that claim: Las Vegas won a WNBA-record 34 games during the regular season (though the Aces benefited from an expanded 40-game schedule) and set the all-time mark for best offensive rating at 113 points per 100 possessions. The execution, the intensity, the discipline and attention to detail: they are so unselfish, so dialed-in and everyone looks like they’re having a blast.
But the strength of their team beyond their familiar six-player rotation was given a rare spotlight on Wednesday as they took the floor without starting point guard Chelsea Gray (the MVP of last year’s finals) and starting center Kiah Stokes, who both suffered foot injuries in Game 3. Their replacements, George and Colson, both shined despite minimal playing time during the regular season or playoffs, helping Las Vegas become the first team in WNBA history to win a postseason contest without multiple starters from the previous game.
“It’s who we are,” an elated Wilson said in between swigs of Armand de Brignac champagne. “We’re professionals. We’re ready when our name is called. And we kept the main thing the main thing. This shit wasn’t easy at all, and a lot of people counted us out. A lot of people counted us out from jump. A lot of people in here said, ‘Liberty in five.’ We know. So that just fueled us.
“People counted us out as back-to-back champions. So, like, that shit fueled us. We read it. We see it. And it fueled us, so thank you. That says a lot about us. We came ready to play, and everybody doubted us. We just kept the foot on the gas.”
It must be said: this is what investment in women’s sports looks like. Yes, Las Vegas have basketball’s finest core four in Wilson, Gray, Young and the brilliant Kelsey Plum. But Mark Davis has spared no expense in helping them max out their potential by cultivating an organizational culture that ranks alongside Olympique Lyonnais Féminin as the gold standard in women’s sports.
Since purchasing the Aces nearly three years ago, the owner of the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders poached Hammon from the NBA on a record $1m-a-year contract and spent $40m on an 80,000 sq ft state-of-the-art practice space that is the first women-specific, unshared training facility in the WNBA’s 27-year history. The results speak for themselves.
It hasn’t all been feelgood. After former player Dearica Hamby was traded to the LA Sparks in January, she claimed she was bullied and manipulated for being pregnant by Hammon and has since filed a gender discrimination complaint against the WNBA and the Aces. (The coach and team have denied the claims.) Additionally, Hammon was also suspended for two games and the team docked a 2025 first-round draft pick in a separate case involving a violation of league rules governing impermissible player benefits.
But it’s done little to impact their performance between the lines.
“We went from darling to villain real quick,” said Hammon, a six-time WNBA All-Star as a player and barrier-breaking NBA assistant coach who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame earlier this year. “We had our good names slandered. All these women did was lock in together. You ask why I’m so confident? It’s because I know exactly who’s in that locker room. I know exactly who I’m going to war with every day. This is the tightest group I’ve ever been around.
“This team has had a thousand opportunities to fall apart. You name it we’ve gone through it this year. And all this team has done is dig in deeper with each other, dig in deeper with each other.”
The bad news for the Aces’ rivals is that basketball’s finest foursome – Wilson, Plum, Young and Gray – are each under contract for 2024. Having laid waste to a New York superteam that was tailor-made to dethrone them, there’s little doubt they’ll go off as favorites for the second three-peat in WNBA history after the Houston Comets, who captured four straight titles from 1997 through 2000. But for now, just savoring the second will do.
“This one’s sweeter,” Hammon said. “It just is. It’s harder to do.”
