LAS VEGAS — By now, there's virtually no mystery to the Aces. Their best players now were their best players three years ago. They weaponize continuity, familiarity. If you believed in this team heading into the WNBA Finals against a shiny new Phoenix Mercury team, it was at least partially because they’ve been here before.
What really makes them special, though, is how calmly they navigate places they haven’t been. The Aces followed up their 89-86 win in Game 1 Friday night with a more fearsome 91-78 victory Sunday afternoon. They head to Phoenix for Games 3 and 4 with a 2-0 series lead, and with the confidence that they can always find some new way to win.
When the Mercury kept Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young quiet in Game 1, bench players Jewell Loyd and Dana Evans picked them up with their scoring. In Game 2, Gray and Young repaid the favor. Young scored 32 points, 21 of them in a record-setting third quarter, and Gray played her usual thrilling game on both sides of the ball, timing up steals and no-look passes with precision. Frustrated with the easy looks the Mercury were getting at the start of Game 1, head coach Becky Hammon had the Aces play zone in the second half, even though it was something they hadn’t really practiced. And if Phoenix’s mismatch hunting asks the Aces to switch less, A'ja Wilson won’t mind chasing after ballhandlers.
“I don’t go over screens. I don’t go under screens. I’m a big, I don’t do that,” Wilson said postgame. “But this is a game that I might have to, so I’m going to buckle in and see how I can still be comfortable in my uncomfortable situation.”
Uncomfortable might be the Aces at their best. This weekend, I remembered something Hammon said after the team’s 2023 championship. The Aces were down two starters on the road in the clinching game, but managed somehow to gut out a win. “I made up a defense and they executed the crap out of it,” a tipsy Hammon said at that postgame press conference. “I was like, we’re gonna try it. We’ll throw it out there and see what happens.”
When a more polished Wilson and a super athlete like Young are the ones carrying it out, there's no plan too challenging to try. Talent buys Hammon and the Aces wiggle room to experiment in this series. (Because this is a best-of-seven series now, both coaches also have the luxury of time.) That doesn’t seem to be an option for the Mercury right now. Vegas has been able to blow up the Alyssa Thomas pick-and-rolls at the heart of the Phoenix offense, and the Mercury have yet to find answers elsewhere. They look plain uncomfortable in their uncomfortable situation.
On defense, the Mercury want to unsettle Vegas. “I think they’ve got very good creators, especially on the guard positions. If you let them be comfortable, be able to see the game completely, it’s gonna be easy passes. You just want to make them as uncomfortable as possible,” rookie guard Monique Akoa Makani told me at Mercury practice on Saturday. Ball pressure, high pickup points, active hands—the object, she said, is “to get the least out of them.”
But the Aces are getting too comfortable now. Their core three players have heated up; in Game 2, the Aces got the most out of all three of them. The Mercury cannot solve Wilson, who had 28 points and 14 rebounds in Game 2. The Vegas bench, mildly existent now after several years of uselessness, has outplayed Phoenix’s in this series. You can see their growing confidence in the way they guard Thomas. Fearlessly, the Vegas guards have gone right after her, digging to force live-ball turnovers, staring down the engine.
You could see it also in Young's absurd third quarter. She sank threes over outstretched arms, hit midrange pullups, broke down defenders, and drove to the rim. “She doesn't really surprise me anymore,” Hammon said. "She's a bad, bad girl.”
Wilson said earlier this week that she’d been reflecting lately on her first WNBA Finals, the 2020 series sweep by the Storm. They were Young’s first Finals, too; she came off the bench and averaged a little under eight points a game in the playoffs. “You could tell she was a little hesitant,” Wilson said, recalling Young’s earliest seasons. “Now here you are, what, Year 7? Jesus. Year 7, and she's facilitating. She’s throwing dimes, doing everything, shooting transition threes and becoming, I’d say, one of the best two-way guards in this league. When you’re talking about the evolution of a great player and a pro, it’s Jackie Young.”
As Wilson pointed out, some people raised an eyebrow when the Aces took Young first overall in the 2019 draft, and a couple seasons in there were still questions about Young’s potential.
“Did you win Rookie of the Year?” Wilson turned to ask Young in the middle of her praise.
“Did I what?”
“Did you win Rookie of the—”
“No. Not even close,” Young deadpanned before bursting into laughter.
See? Wilson was saying. That’s not a career trajectory she can relate to herself: Wilson was an immediately successful prodigy who did win Rookie of the Year and has now won MVP in half the WNBA seasons she’s played. But she knows enough to appreciate how special her teammate really is. It’s hard, rewarding work to start somewhere uncomfortable and settle in.
