The Las Vegas Aces are not themselves. That much is clear.
“We see a lot of glimpses of the Aces, and we see a lot of glimpses of, I don’t know what Aces spelled backwards, but that’s what it is,” two-time MVP A’ja Wilson said.
The contemplative look on the face of head coach Becky Hammon, who sat next to Wilson after Saturday’s loss to New York in the WNBA Finals rematch, was familiar to anyone who has watched the two-time defending champions plummet in the standings.
Las Vegas (6-6) has already lost the same number of games as last season. Four of them came at home, where the Aces were nearly perfect last year with the same starting five for most of the season. Going into Tuesday’s games, they are barely in the playoff picture as No. 6 seed Atlanta (6-6) and Indiana (5-10). For the first time since 2019, they have lost three games in a row.
What’s wrong with the Aces? The superficial answer is that the super team misses its fantastic leader, Chelsea Gray. The veteran remains out with a foot injury she suffered in Game 3 of the Finals. She was first upgraded to doubtful ahead of the Liberty game, and Hammon said the star is expected to make her debut Wednesday against the Seattle Storm (9-5).
Dig a little deeper and it’s clear that Gray won’t solve all their current problems. The defensive cohesion that fueled their dominant success in 2023 is missing. The lineup change changed what was expected and required of individuals. They have been disorganized, undisciplined and indifferent, Hammon said after the New York loss. She saw eight different Aces teams in one 40-minute game and there was no consistency, she said.
“We don’t have a lead and we haven’t had one since Day 1 of training camp,” Hammon said. “I felt it. And I tried to deal with it. But we… we’re just not that hungry.”
Everyone else in the league is looking hungrily at their two trophies and ready to take advantage.
Everyone else is better
Teams from around the league are going to the Aces harder than ever before. Front offices continue to build rosters to take down the Aces, and so far it’s working.
“The last few years the Aces have been good enough to start slow and maybe it’s okay not to come in when they’re excited because [the Aces] were just so much better, and we were so much better that way,” reigning Sixth Player of the Year Alysha Clark, in her second season with Las Vegas, told Yahoo Sports. “But teams are better this year. Last year they came in and wanted our number because they were the defending champions. But after becoming two-time champions, things have improved even further.”
Liberty’s super team came closer than most people remember to forcing a decisive Game 5 last fall. After the loss, Aces guard Kelsey Plum stoked the flames when she said the Liberty were “really good individual players, but they don’t care about each other.” New York didn’t have the chemistry of the Aces at the time, who built their team with three No. 1 picks between 2017 and 2019. Now the No. 2 seed returns a starting five with more chemistry and confidence that sits second in the standings at 12-2 behind Connecticut (12-1).
Phoenix (7-7), which came close to clinching the 2021 title, brought in NBA head coach Nate Tibbetts in a move similar to the Aces landing Hammon ahead of the 2022 season. The Mercury added 2021 Finals MVP Kahleah Copper and 2019 Mystics Championship point guard Natasha Cloud to win a title with veterans Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner.
Seattle (9-5) opened up cap space for a splash of talent in former MVP and Sparks champion Nneka Ogwumike and All-WNBA point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith. They pair with Jewell Loyd, the 2023 scoring leader.
Phoenix, Seattle, Minnesota (11-3) and New York have all defeated the Aces, as have lottery residents Atlanta and Los Angeles. Clark, who came into the starting lineup in Gray’s absence, echoed what Gray said in preseason. The Aces can’t stagnate while everyone around them improves.
“The approach we’ve been able to take can’t just be the same,” Clark said.
Losing Gray changes the recipe
Plum cited an analogy Hammon made last week about what Gray’s loss means, even for a stacked team of champions.
“If you bake a cake, or anything else for that matter, and you take out a key ingredient like Chelsea Gray, the food tastes different,” says Plum. “There are some things that are just schematically different. I think people protect us in a different way because she’s not out there.”
Gray, who won the championship with the Sparks in 2016, is one of the best point guards in the world and has been called an extension of Hammon. Her 7.3 assists per game ranked third in the WNBA last year and hasn’t dropped below sixth since 2016. She has a knack for knowing when and how to stop the bleeding, Hammon said, and that is sorely missed when things start to snowball. It was Gray’s historic postseason scoring streak that lifted Vegas to the trophy.
Much has been made of Hammon’s dependence on its starters. Wilson (22.8 ppg), Plum (18.7), Jackie Young (17.6) and Gray (15.3) finished the 2023 season as the first four teammates to average 15 points or more per game in same season. They were all named to Team USA this month for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. The starters, including center Kiah Stokes, averaged 79.4 ppg (85% of offense) last season, up from their record of 77.5 ppg the year before.
It’s not just Gray’s production loss; it’s that spending games on the bench changes what everyone else has to do on the pitch. The staff is not the same. The roles are different.
“We already have high expectations for ourselves and what we need to do,” said Clark, a three-time WNBA champion who won two titles in Seattle. “And then we’re thrown into these new positions and we still expect ourselves to be of the same caliber, right? But the reality is that we are in completely different positions.”
Plum and Jackie Young commit the offense, causing them to write lyrics that they are not used to and that bring about a change in mentality. With Clark moving up to the starting lineup, Hammon will have to turn to someone else to provide the spark first off the bench. Kate Martin, the rookie from Iowa, will take on that task.
“When you take out an ingredient, it trickles down throughout the group,” Hammon said.
The Aces’ offense is down a bit from its historic levels, but not far off. Their 86.8 ppg ranks first this season and an offensive rating of 103.3 ranks third. Wilson is putting together another MVP-worthy season, averaging 28 ppg (first), 11.5 rpg (first), 2.5 bpg (second) and 1.7 spg (seventh). A rebound percentage of 19.4 is the best of her career.
“There will be nights where we might not shoot great. There will be nights where we take incredible photos,” Wilson said. “The defensive side is what we can always control. Always in control.”
And that is the most striking flaw.
Aces’ defense collapses
The Aces outscored their opponents last year with a net rating of 15.3 due to their league-best defensive rating of 97.7. In only six of their forty matches have they been awarded more than 90 points. Two went to New York and one to Connecticut.
The Aces fell from their position to 10th in defensive rating (104.2), better than the lottery home Wings and Fever. The Sun led the league with 90.7. In twelve games, Las Vegas has given up 90 or more five times.
Their steal rate dropped from the top three to the bottom three, while their opponents hit more threes at a higher rate.
“Defensively we’re not very good right now and that’s just the truth,” Clark said. “We can honestly pick from a hat full which areas we want to improve in now.”
Memory can be fickle. Championships, awards and titles can change the reality of everything that came before the anointing. The Aces weren’t one of the best defensive teams when they won the first professional championship in Las Vegas in 2022. Their stats actually dropped from the year before and they won it all in a way that was closer than most might remember. They clinched the No. 1 seed on the final day of the regular season in a tie with reigning champion Chicago (26-10) and barely ahead of Connecticut (25-11). Their net rating of 6.9 was the franchise’s lowest since 2019.
The semifinal series against a Seattle Storm squad led by Loyd, Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart went to overtime in Game 3 of a tied game. The Aces won, taking Game 4 and advancing to the Finals, where they won by possession in Game 1 against the Sun. Connecticut, which upset the Sky in five games, went back East 2-0, crushing the Aces by 29 in Game 3 and nearly forcing Game 5.
In 2023, Las Vegas locked up defensively to tear up the league and capture the top seed in a final-day battle with New York. After winning the WNBA Finals openers at home, they only needed one in New York and botched Game 4 enough, despite losing Gray and Stokes, to win it all. It was about to return to Las Vegas for a decisive Game 5 that could have changed WNBA history.
It’s a long season, Gray is on his way back and this group manages to recover in short moments. Clark believes these early struggles and adjustments will only make the Aces better, an ominous claim for the rest of the league.
“We may be a little battered and bruised and all that stuff right now, but when things start to click, it will start to click,” Clark said. “And you know, we’ll say, ‘This is what we talked about.’ We don’t panic because we know it will change at some point.”
