At the end of the first quarter of their opening playoff game against the Las Vegas Aces, the Seattle Storm couldn't have found themselves in a much better position. They were leading 18-9, having held the Aces to just 11 percent shooting from the field. Unanimous MVP A'ja Wilson, who had just received her trophy in a pregame ceremony, was 1-of-8. The Storm were cooking.
If a blueprint exists for Seattle getting past Vegas in this best-of-three first-round matchup, it looks a lot like what happened in that first quarter. The Storm, always a defense-first unit, were playing with an intensity and speed that totally discombobulated the Aces' offense. Even without defensive anchor Ezi Magbegor, Seattle's collection of defensive hawks were switching and sliding and blitzing fast enough to make Wilson and the Aces look slow and ponderous. Every shot at the rim was contested, and Seattle's traps and rotations fired so quickly that they looked less like a basketball team scrambling to cover the court than a well-drilled soccer team executing a perfect counter-press.
By one statistic and one statistic only, the second quarter went even better for the Storm. After having spent the first quarter clanging shots off the rim and backboard, Wilson disappeared from the second—she played six minutes and took zero shots. The problem for the Storm was that Wilson's meek start to the playoffs only seemed to serve as a reminder to the Aces that they are more than just the team the employs the MVP. In the second quarter, head coach Becky Hammon went small, throwing bench scorers Tiffany Hayes and Alysha Clark onto the floor to run a faster-paced offense at the direction of point guard Chelsea Gray. Whereas the first quarter was all about Wilson trying and failing to initiate offense from a standstill, the second was all about cutting Gray and the other guards loose. Gray spread the floor and pushed the pace, and ended up with five points and five assists in the quarter. Hayes scored 12 points in the frame and didn't miss a single shot; Clark and Jackie Young chipped in a combined 12 points without a missed shot between them.
Perhaps Wilson's abysmal first half was a work. Perhaps having realized that becoming the league's unanimous MVP left her without any further haters or doubters to silence, she had to spend the first half of the game becoming her own hater and doubter. Once the third quarter started, second-half Wilson got busy shutting first-half Wilson up. She scored 17 in the second half on 8-of-13 shooting, carrying the Aces to an eventual 78-67 blowout victory. The Storm, who can only play effective offense for a quarter or two at a time, completely unraveled in the final frame, missing every single one of their 12 field goal attempts and scoring just two points.
The Storm learned on Sunday night the same lesson that every team has learned over the past two seasons, which is that the Aces never seem to run out of ways to hurt you. Wilson's stinking up the joint? No problem, they'll just turn the offense over to Gray and let her rev the engine. Kelsey Plum can't buy a bucket? Here comes Sixth Woman Of The Year Tiffany Hayes to score 20 points and get five steals off the bench. And behind all of this, the Aces' defense continues to hum—Wilson went on snuffing out possessions even while she was struggling to shoot, and finished the game with five blocks.
With just under four minutes to play in the fourth quarter, with the Aces up 70-67, Las Vegas engineered a series of possessions that seemed designed to highlight just how hard it is to keep them at bay for four quarters. Wilson had already completed her second-half rampage, and Gray found herself working against Gabby Williams, the Storm's best perimeter defender and probably the best athlete on the floor. Gray probed a bit with her dribble, and then hit a step-back jumper from the free-throw line. 72-67. On the next possession, it was Jackie Young shouldering Williams a few steps into the paint before hitting a fallaway jumper from the baseline. 74-67. Next up was Hayes, taking Skylar Diggins-Smith off the dribble and spinning into a lefty hook over Nneka Ogwumike. 76-67. Back to Gray: one more fadeaway from the free-throw line over Williams to make it 78-67.
That's how quickly and ferociously the Aces can turn a game on its head. One minute you're right there, hanging tough with the defending champs, and then suddenly the shots start falling from every direction, and you're on the wrong end of just another Aces blowout.
