September 28, 2024
They meet again: What the Las Vegas Aces need to do to beat the New York Liberty
The WNBA semifinals feature a 2023 Finals rematch
The first round of the WNBA playoffs was over as quickly as it started. All the higher seeds, including the No. 4 seed Las Vegas Aces, advanced in two-game sweeps. That set up a highly anticipated rematch of the 2023 WNBA Finals between the Aces and the No. 1 seed New York Liberty.
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Both teams are different than they were a year ago. It will be a challenge, to say the least, for the Aces to advance to their third straight WNBA Finals.
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How the season series played out
The Aces and Liberty met three times during the regular season, and New York swept Las Vegas. In the three games, the Liberty averaged 81.3 points to the Aces’ 73.3. However, the Aces were at full strength in only one of the three games.
| Game date | Winner | Score |
|---|---|---|
| June 15 | New York | 90-82 |
| Aug. 17 | New York | 79-67 |
| Sept. 8 | New York | 75-71 |
In the first game, Las Vegas was without starting point guard Chelsea Gray, and in the last one, it was without 2024 WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson. Yet the game the Aces lost by the most was the one where they had all their players healthy.
The Liberty had different leading scorers in each game. In the first game, center Jonquel Jones scored 34. In the second game, guard Sabrina Ionescu had 23, and in the third game, forward Breanna Stewart had 21. The Aces were led by Wilson and guard Kelsey Plum. Plum averaged 20.0 points per game while knocking down nine total 3-pointers. Wilson averaged 22.5 points and 10.0 rebounds in her two games played.
Despite two of the three games being single-digit contests, the Liberty led by at least 16 points at some point in all three games. They also dominated the Aces on the glass, outrebounding them 122 to 86 in the three games. Las Vegas, meanwhile, was able to knock down 3-pointers at a high rate, hitting 35 triples compared to 25 for New York.
“First of all, New York is a lot better than they were last year, just plain and simple,” Plum told reporters on Tuesday after the Aces clinched their first-round playoff series against the Seattle Storm. “They’re bigger. They shoot the ball at a better clip. If you go down the line, pound for pound, individually, all of them are better basketball players. …
“We have to focus on what we do. Now, there’s adjustments and things you make throughout the series, for sure, but I think sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. I mean, listen, they kicked our butt all three times. … But to be honest, this is a new season [in the playoffs], and this is a fresh start. There’s no secret that they’ve taken care of business, and they’ve done what they needed to do, and that’s why they’re the [No.] 1 seed. And so it’s an uphill battle.”
Matchups to watch
The biggest matchup in this series starts and ends with the winners of the last three MVP awards, Wilson and Stewart. They ranked first and fourth, respectively, in the WNBA in scoring this season and were both in the top eight in rebounding. They are the leaders for their teams and should guard each other to start every game.
Stewart had a strong three games against the Aces in the regular season, averaging 17.7 points and 10.0 rebounds. She has grown her game a lot this year, trying to become more of a wing player than a stretch forward. She has been more efficient offensively since the Olympic break, which showed as she had her best offensive game against the Aces on Sept. 8. That also happened to be the game Wilson missed due to injury.
Wilson, in the midst of a historic season, was very good in her two games against New York. Her 22.5 points per game came on 54.8% shooting from the field. She had four blocks and three steals in the two games as well. The one area she could look to improve on is offensive rebounding. For a player who averaged 2.0 offensive rebounds per game this season, she had zero against the Liberty.
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Wilson has been almost unstoppable this year, but she has a big burden to shoulder in this series. She will look for the rest of the Aces’ “Core Four” to help take some of that load.
“I feel like we’re just resilient. The Core Four of us, we know what it takes,” Wilson told reporters on Tuesday. “We know that we can’t let the game slip through our hands because we felt the other side of it. … We don’t want to be trying to dig out of games because then you you put the fate of the game in other people’s hands, and you don’t want that.
“So when it comes to just fighting through little things, making sure we’re all on the same page, and keeping the main thing the main thing, I think that’s something that has really stuck out to me throughout this start of the playoffs for us.”
The other key matchup will be Aces guard Jackie Young against Ionescu. Ionescu was a top-10 scorer in the WNBA this year while also ranking in the top five in assists. She averaged 17.3 points against the Aces during the regular season but shot just 35.7% from the field and knocked down only six threes in the three games. That was thanks in large part to Young’s defense. The Aces know one Ionescu three can send Barclays Center into a frenzy, and they want to limit that as much as possible.
Offensively, Young has had an up-and-down season. She struggled in her three games against New York, averaging just 8.7 points per game on 29.0% shooting from the field. Since the Olympic break, Young has scored above her season average of 15.8 points only three times, and she scored just 21 total points in the two games against the Storm in the first round of the playoffs.
The Aces will need Young to find her form from last year’s WNBA Finals, when she averaged 18.5 points per game on 51.0% shooting. In the first two games of that series, she scored 50 points and looked like the frontrunner for Finals MVP.
Young is one of the strongest guards in the league, and her ability to get downhill and knock down threes will go a long way toward the Aces winning this series.
Stats that will decide the series
In a series that features the WNBA’s top two offenses, rebounding and 3-point shooting will be key. New York had the edge on the glass in the teams’ regular-season series, but Las Vegas made more 3-pointers.
In the regular season, the Aces were the ninth-best rebounding team in the WNBA, while the Liberty were the best. On the offensive glass, the Aces were the worst in the league, whereas the Liberty were the fifth-best.
The Aces’ biggest issue on the glass against New York has always been Jones. She had 33 rebounds, including nine offensive rebounds, in the regular-season series. Yet the Aces only gave up 20 second-chance points to New York in the three games.
Las Vegas’ defense has been much improved over its last 12 games, giving up over 80 points just once in that span. However, head coach Becky Hammon says every defensive possession doesn’t end until the Aces have secured the rebound. That will be important to slowing down the high-powered Liberty offense.
“I just really feel like we have to win the battle of the boards every night until we earn it,” Hammon told reporters on Tuesday. “Our defense is great. We have to reward ourselves with securing the ball. And once we secure the ball, we’re off to the races. That’s the other part: It gives us great pace when we can rebound the ball and get it pushed to the other end.”
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Three-point shooting will also be very important. The Liberty led the WNBA in the regular season with 10.1 made threes per game. The Aces do average 9.4 threes made per game, so they also can hit from beyond the arc. But Las Vegas let opponents shoot 35.0% from 3-point range during the regular season — the fourth-worst mark in the league — and New York has multiple players who can get hot from distance.
Ionescu leads the way for New York from beyond the arc, hitting 107 triples during the regular season. That was fifth-most in the league. She is coming off a 36-point performance with five threes in the first round of the playoffs. Stewart, Jones, wing Betnijah Laney-Hamilton and forward Leonie Fiebich all can also knock down multiple threes for New York.
The Aces are led by Plum, who hit 110 threes in the regular season, which was third-best in the WNBA. Las Vegas also can get multiple threes in a game from Young, Gray and reserve guard Tiffany Hayes.
These teams have a ton of shooters, so whoever can make their outside jumpers will have an edge in this series.
Aces’ X factor: Kiah Stokes
Las Vegas’ biggest issue against New York over the last two years has been matching Jones’ size and strength. That’s why Aces center Kiah Stokes will be the X factor in this series.
Stokes will be tasked with guarding Jones for much of the series, whether she starts or comes off the bench. She will not be asked to score, but she will need to do her best to defend Jones and limit her opportunities on the glass.
In the two games the Aces lost to New York by single digits during the regular season, Stokes had 21 total rebounds. In the game they lost by 12, she had just three. Stokes played at least 20 minutes in all three regular-season meetings and helped hold Jones to 15 and 10 points in the latter two. However, in the first meeting where New York scored 90 points, Jones had 34.
Stokes will need to use her size and strength to push Jones out of the paint and limit her impact. The more she can affect Jones, the better the chance the Aces have to win the series.
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Prediction: New York in five games
It’s been a roller-coaster season for the two-time defending champions. The Aces were without Gray for the first 12 games and started 6-6. Their defense has been inconsistent, but they seem to have found their form over the final stretch of the season.
They have also been a better road team than home this season after being almost unbeatable at Michelob Ultra Arena during the first two years of Hammon’s tenure. This may point to them being able to find success at Barclays Center and regain home-court advantage as the lower seed.
However, Barclays specifically has been a house of horrors for Las Vegas.
In the last two seasons, the Aces are 1-4 at Barclays Center, losing by an average of 12.8 points per game. This leads to my prediction of New York winning this series in five games. It will be tough for the Aces to win this series if they struggle on the East Coast.
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“[The Liberty have] been the best team all year,” Hammon said. “They played like a team pissed off, with an edge. We’ve worked our way there. I feel like we got our edge back probably in the last three to four weeks. It always starts on the defensive end.
“But at the end of the day, wins, losses, shots made, shots missed, it’s all 0-0. … I don’t think we’re the same team that New York has seen. We’re not the same team as last year, and we’re not the same team that they saw in August.”
Written by Matthew Walter
Matthew Walter covers the Las Vegas Aces, the Pac-12 and the WCC for the Next. He is a former Director of Basketball Operations and Video Coordinator at three different Division I women's basketball programs.
