Las Vegas heating up but Vandershoot finding her shot (2024)

The Las Vegas Aces captured their second consecutive WNBA title Wednesday, rallying to defeat the New York Liberty 70-69 on the road in Game 4. Two-time MVP A’ja Wilson led all scorers with 24 points and 16 rebounds.

Las Vegas is the first team to win back-to-back WNBA titles since the Los Angeles Sparks in 2001-2002.

Without Chelsea Gray and Kiah Stokes, Aces coach Becky Hammon said plans to use some new tactics. “We’ve run some stuff we have never done. Never never," she said. "We may not know what we’re doing, but they won’t either.”

Hammon emphasized the importance of valuing every possession, and she said she's thought of ways to “steal possessions” in Wednesday's game. “I’m not afraid to try things. We might fail, but it won’t be for lack of trying.”

A’ja Wilson co-signed that the Aces have been experimenting in recent days. “It’s new to everybody," she said, "and I think that’s the beautiful thing about it. It’s like, we’re just learning as we go."

After forcing a Betnijah Laney miss despite Laney having deep post position inside, Jackie Young fell to the floor as the ball went out of bounds with 6:28 to play in the first quarter.

Young remained on the ground for a little while and appeared to have some difficulty with her left ankle when she got back up. She remained in the game, but hasn't scored since. It's something to keep an eye on going forward, and further highlights the precarious status of the Aces rotation with Chelsea Gray and Kiah Stokes both out, and Candace Parker already unavailable.

Chelsea Gray will not see the floor tonight, but she’s already playing an active role on Las Vegas’ sideline. She’s been trying to call out defensive switches and has been trying to communicate with her teammates during dead-ball situations.

She said Tuesday she probably would not have a voice by game’s end. It wouldn’t be shocking if that was the case.

The Aces are working their tails off defensively, limiting the Liberty to 4-of-11 shooting thus far by showing off some serious scheme discipline.

They're switching actively on the perimeter, sending two to the ball in the paint, and leaving Courtney Vandersloot as wide open as possible from distance. The problem for Las Vegas is that New York has made three 3-pointers in the first five minutes, including a Sabrina Ionescu open triple in transition that gave the home team an 11-9 lead and caused Becky Hammon to call time out.

Even with Chelsea Gray and Kiah Stokes sidelined for Game 4, Las Vegas star A’ja Wilson said her mindset entering the contest is the same as it’s been from the start of the playoffs. “F--- it, let’s go play,” she said at shootaround.

“It’s playoffs. It’s the finals. We don’t have time to think. We don’t have time to be sad or sorry. Obviously, we’re missing our two starters, but we gotta play.”

Gray was wearing a walking boot and using a scooter at Wednesday's shootaround.

It’s no accident that players more frequently have been appearing on WNBA benches. Former players Jenny Boucek and Jennifer Gillom coached against each other in 2009, marking the first time ex-W players met as coaches in a regular-season game. But a 2020 rule made them less of an exception. It allowed teams an additional coach, giving them three assistants, provided the hires had at least one year of experience as a WNBA player; it would be organizational malpractice for a franchise not to take advantage of adding staff.

In part because of the rule change, the player pathway into WNBA coaching has expanded. Most head coaches aren’t hired without being assistants first, and the new policy grew the number of available jobs by 50 percent. At the start of the 2023 season, five head coaches were former players who had been WNBA assistants, four of them hired after the league’s adjustment.

At times, the WNBA regular season felt like an extended opening act for a destined finals matchup between the Las Vegas Aces and the New York Liberty. Fans – and the league itself – have been eagerly anticipating this series. Aces guard Kelsey Plum went so far as to call the meeting “inevitable.”

The pairing of two big markets in the finals with so many bankable stars on the court is a huge win for the WNBA, as the Aces lead the series 2-1 heading into Wednesday’s Game 4 in New York. The Aces have been part of transforming Las Vegas into a sports town, drawing huge crowds at home and on the road. The Liberty have also turned their home games into destination events in Brooklyn, revitalizing what had been a moribund franchise.

The buzz around this matchup, even if it felt pre-ordained, is good for business in 2023, and the birth of the rivalry should be a positive in the immediate future. But the consolidation of talent on the Aces and Liberty to this degree poses some questions about what player movement could look like in the WNBA going forward as other teams and players observe the Liberty and Aces’ success.

One of Becky Hammon’s consistent refrains during the 2023 season has been that, compared to the 2022 champions, this year’s Las Vegas Aces have done more with less. The front office’s goal of the offseason was to increase the team’s depth, but due to injury and Riquna Williams’ legal trouble, Las Vegas’ rotation wasn’t any deeper than it was last year. In fact, this season’s group was thinner.

Even as the Aces won more and did so more convincingly than the previous iteration, the foundation of their success had some cracks. Las Vegas never really had a backup guard because of Williams’ absence. Alysha Clark and Kierstan Bell gave minutes at forward off the bench, but Chelsea Gray, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young were the only ballhandlers. Once Candace Parker went out with season-ending foot surgery in July, the Aces didn’t have any consistent frontcourt help in the second unit either, other than Clark who was already moonlighting as a perimeter reserve.

That placed a heavy burden on the core four of A’ja Wilson, Gray, Plum and Young. Las Vegas couldn’t win without the four of them producing at a high level, or at least without three of them winning their matchups on any given night.

The WNBA continues to set high viewership numbers. The finals through Game 3 are the most watched in 20 years.

There’s no reason A'ja Wilson shouldn’t be having fun in 2023. Sunday was another tour de force in a year full of them. She began the game with a bucket on one end and a block on the other en route to 34 points, eight rebounds, four blocks and two steals; Las Vegas won her 34 minutes by 26 points and lost the other six minutes by 14. The game tipped off with Wilson accepting her second consecutive defensive player of the year trophy, but every performance from Wilson makes the case that she is the best player in the game — period.

“She does everything for us,” teammate Jackie Young says. “She can score at all three levels, she defends for us. She can guard everyone one through five, and she brings it every night. She’s a leader for this team. We all trust her, and we get going off of her.”

As the 2023 WNBA regular season wound down and the New York Liberty prepared for the playoffs with championship hopes, several former players started a group text. When the current iteration of the franchise takes the floor for games, the former Liberty stars message each other about the on-court happenings they observe. They muse about physical screens, and evaluate the Liberty’s offensive and defensive execution. They wear Liberty gear and share selfies.

“For the first time in my life since I’ve retired, I’m just a basketball fan,” says Sue Wicks, a Liberty forward from 1997-2002 who is one of seven players in the franchise’s Ring of Honor. “To feel fanhood, is a great sensation for me.”

No longer does Wicks worry about the security of the WNBA or the stability of her former organization, which is one of only two remaining franchises from 1997 in its original city. Now, she can just enjoy New York’s success.

During an in-game interview with ESPN, Jonquel Jones looked directly at the television camera and said: “They want the players to be better, the refs got to be better at the end of the day. … They want us to be better; be better, refs.”

Jones is not alone voicing frustration about the WNBA’s officiating this season. Among other recent complaints, Connecticut Sun guard Natisha Hiedeman recently tweeted that she had been fined for post-semifinals comments. She wrote on social media: “refs have been terrible from both sides…not even in the series but the whole season.” Of course, complaints about officials aren’t uncommon in sports. Scan any league during any season, and one is bound to find similar gripes.

“I think there’s always going to be a very healthy, normal tension between teams and officials,” says Sue Blauch, the head of WNBA referee performance and development and a former WNBA referee of 20 seasons.

Still, as this year’s WNBA Finals resume, some of the frustrations voiced by teams seem as loud as they’ve ever been.