‘We had excellent talent, and a good team’: What kept the Las Vegas Aces from three-peating

“Take a team like Minnesota, where you have good talent, but you have an excellent team,” Hammon said after Game 4. “We had excellent talent, and had a good team, and at the end of the day this game rewards your habits. It rewards the hard work. It rewards the selflessness required in a team sport to be able to win. And what I’ve always tried to convey to this group… their success is so intertwined with each other’s… their individual greatness comes from them being great together.”

The series loss to New York was a microcosm of the Aces season. It highlighted two of the biggest issues they faced throughout the season. In games 1 and 2, they struggled defensively. In Game 4, the defense was better, but they struggled to make shots. Both of those issues were the greatest downfalls for Las Vegas this year consistently.

The Aces gave up an average of 80.9 points per game this season. That was only 0.6 points more per game than last year, but the league overall this season was a much better on defense. The Aces defense one year ago was second best in opponent points per game, just 1.3 points behind first-place Connecticut. This year, they had the sixth best defense on a per game basis, a full seven points behind the Sun, who once again led the league in that statistic.

If you go based on advanced stats, the Aces had the best defense in the league a year ago, with a defensive rating of 99.2. This year, their defensive rating was 101.2, which was good enough for fifth. They were the only team with a sub 100 defensive rating in 2023 while in 2024 there were four teams’ sub 100 and the Aces weren’t one of them.

“We’re gonna have a lot of hard learning lessons,” Hammon said. “It hurts now, I promise you it’s gonna hurt tomorrow, probably worse, because it sets in the next day. But you got to build habits, and you got to work in a way that you believe you deserve to win. At the end of the day, I thought our shortcomings stood out a little bit. We have some great things to build on. We don’t have it every year. It’s not the way this works. You don’t get to flip a switch. It’s the beautiful thing about sports, actually, the work and the commitment and the buy in and the play hard and the want to and the will, will always show up in the end.”

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This showed itself throughout the season, as the Aces had 11 games in which an opponent scored at least 85 points against them. In nine of the Aces 13 losses during the regular season they gave up at least 85 points, as well as in games 1 and 2 in Brooklyn. The bigger issue they had against New York was how many points they were giving up in the paint. In games 1 and 2, the Aces gave up a combined 86 points in the paint to the Liberty. That was 49% of the points New York scored in those two games.

The Aces have gotten phenomenal post defense from A’ja Wilson over the past few years, as she won back-to-back Defensive Players of the Year awards in 2022 and 2023. She finished second in 2024 and was dominant once again, leading the league in blocks. Starting next to her for a lot of the last two years has been Kiah Stokes. 

Stokes has been a solid post defender but this year she returned from an injury she suffered in Game 3 of the WNBA finals. She clearly wasn’t herself this year, setting a low in points per game and field goal attempts since she arrived in the Sin City. She also had less blocks and rebounds this year than she did a year ago. Stokes’s lack of offense this year led to the Aces exploring other, smaller options in her spot. which put them at a disadvantage size-wise in the paint.

“It seems like everyone is just gunning for you and every single game is like a back against the wall type of game,” Wilson said. “You going to get everybody’s first punch, you’re going to get everybody’s best punch, and you have to sometimes withstand that. Over the course of 40 minutes, and over the course of the season, that’s very, very hard to do, but I think we did a great job of weathering a lot of storms, particularly down the stretch. Obviously we didn’t have to start that we wanted to, but I think we started to really come together. That’s what matters the most to me, is that we never back down from any fight. We never back down from any challenge. We were always just happy for one another, and the energy in our locker room is something that’s so special.”

The lack of offense from Stokes was part of a bigger issue for the Aces offensively this year. Last season, the Aces led the league in scoring, averaging 92.8 points per game. This year they once again led the league in scoring, but only averaged 86.4 points per game. The biggest area of difference for Las Vegas offensively this year was their struggle to knock down the three ball.

Last year, the Aces were the second best three-point shooting team in the WNBA by percentage. This year, they were fourth, shooting 1.7% worse from behind the arc. While that percentage may seem small, the players with the biggest discrepancy in shooting was their starting backcourt.

Jackie Young, Kelsey Plum, and Chelsea Gray all had their three-point percentage drop year over year. Plum’s percentage from distance dropped by 2.1%, Gray’s by 8.3% and Young’s by a whopping 11.2%. Plum and Young were the Aces leaders in triples attempted in both 2023 and 2024.

“That’s not the way we wanted to end the season, obviously,” Gray said. “We just shared a lot of love for each other, and everything that we’ve been through this season, and the highs and lows and the locker room is just so special, and it’s a place where we’re so vulnerable, and the people that we see all the time and love on each other all the time. I’ll go to war with that crew any day.”

In 2023, the Aces got an average of 51.6 points per game from their starting backcourt. In 2024, they got just 42.2 from the same backcourt. The majority of that decrease came from Gray who missed the first 12 games of the season while recovering from the injury she suffered in the 2024 WNBA Finals. However, both Plum and Young saw both their scoring averages and shooting percentages drop from last year as well. This showed itself in Game 4 as Young and Gray combined to shot 4 for 18 from the field and the three guards combined for just 28 points.

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Shooting is unfortunately not a linear thing. Players hope to improve year over in their shooting and scoring but it doesn’t always happen that way. The Aces offense a year ago was incredibly efficient and both Young and Plum were shooting the ball at career high rates. There is always going to be a natural regression but with the condensed play this year due to the Olympics and all three of the Aces guards participating on the national team, that put more miles than ever on their bodies and their minds. 

After these struggles, the question is what is next for the Aces. In their first offseason under Hammon and GM Natalie Williams where they haven’t won a championship, the Aces will need to find more offensive and defensive versatility from their fifth starting spot. Three of the Aces “Core Four” are under contract for next season. The only one that isn’t is Plum. The Aces will also see the last two sixth players of the year become free agents in both Alysha Clark and Tiffany Hayes.

“We’re gonna have to get together and figure it out,” Hammon said of the offseason. “Obviously we have to get better. We have to really take a sharp look at ourselves. Look ourselves in the mirror, see our shortcomings, and then you gotta make the moves necessary, whatever that means, to put the best product that we possibly can. It’s not going to be the same group probably next year. It just won’t and I’m sad about that, because I really like that group. They’re a pain in my ass, but I was a pain in their ass too. And I like that group, you know, I love that group.”

Having an offseason where Gray and Stokes can continue to get healthy and Young can heal from whatever has been hampering her since the Olympic break will hopefully help bring all their offensive numbers back up. However, the Aces biggest need is finding a fifth starter who can help compliment the “Core Four” on both ends of the floor. Stokes and Megan Gustafson are both under contract for next season. The Aces also have had Elizabeth Kitley rehabbing at their facility from her torn ACL she suffered her senior year. The 24^thoverall pick in last year’s draft was projected to be a first-round pick before she injured her knee.

The Aces came into 2024 with the hope of threepeating. However, as Wilson said, “it’s hard”, and Las Vegas saw that firsthand. The Aces couldn’t play consistently enough on both sides of the ball to find the success they’d had in Hammon’s first two years. This offseason will be important as they need to find one more piece to complement their core along with re-signing Plum. However, the greatness of Wilson and the run of success shouldn’t be overlooked in a rollercoaster year for the Aces.

“When I play next to her man, I understand what she’s saying about it hurting for her,” Gray said of her MVP teammate. “She had record breaking year, like it was amazing. So just to be able to witness that you wanted it to all come to an end the way you want it to… I’m sitting next to somebody that is great every time she steps on the floor. I say this all the time, that people give flowers after they retire, and sometimes it’s too late. You got to do it while they’re playing and get people out to watch greatness. So being able to witness that every day is special.”

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