Becky Hammon apologized to her players this week. Her Las Vegas Aces were soundly beaten by the New York Liberty in a sloppy, listless Game 2 of the WNBA semifinals, pushing their season to the brink. They were then soundly beaten by Hammon, who took them to task in her news conference, ripping apart their mentality during their title defense this season. She did not regret the substance of her message, exactly, but she did regret the delivery.
“It was not great wording on my part to convey what I wanted to convey, and probably not the greatest timing,” Hammon said at shootaround on Friday. “So I apologized to them as a group.”
She had not intended to say her players let themselves get distracted by appearing in television commercials. (“I want their faces everywhere,” she clarified. “I want them to get paid in every possible way, and winning does that.”) But she had intended to call out what she saw as a lack of drive: “The edge is what I’ve been begging for.” That had been absent throughout much of the early season, roared to life down the stretch, and then has only intermittently flickered during these playoffs.
Hammon does not have to beg for it this weekend. Las Vegas had that edge—and some to spare—for Game 3 on Friday. The Aces trounced the Liberty 95–81. The win puts them down 2–1 in the best-of-five series and keeps their season alive for at least a few more days. The game was evenly matched early: The first half featured a WNBA playoff-record 18 lead changes. But Las Vegas broke it wide open in the third quarter and never looked back.
“That was probably our most complete game of the season,” Hammon said. “The game I've been waiting for and believed that they had.”
That meant a balanced, comprehensive scoring effort from their entire cohort of guards, which has been rare this season for the Aces. They nearly always enjoy serious production from MVP forward A’ja Wilson. But that has too often gone unaccompanied by solid performances from more than one guard. It had been missing in the first two games of the series: There was one standout night from Kelsey Plum (24 points in Game 1) and consistent quality play from Jackie Young, but there had not yet been a game in which all three starting guards were clicking, let alone one in which all three scored in double figures. The Aces finally got that as they dismantled the Liberty on Friday. Young scored 24 points, Plum had 20 and Chelsea Gray added 10 with seven assists. For good measure, they got double digits from another guard, too, with 11 for Tiffany Hayes on the same day she was announced as Sixth Player of the Year. It represented the kind of guard play that Hammon had been trying to unlock all year.
“Man, we was waiting on that, too,” Gray said afterward with a laugh.
Their central problems of the last week seemed to suddenly dissipate. The Aces’ defense felt cohesive. Players no longer got lost on switches. They cut down on sloppy play and careless turnovers. And they were able to pressure the Liberty in a way that has been very rare this season for the best team in the WNBA. (There had been just one game this year in which they were held to fewer points.) Despite a notable size advantage for New York—which had been crucial in the first two games of this series—Las Vegas was able to own the paint. Game 2 featured a 44–24 edge on points in the paint for the Liberty. Game 3 nearly flipped that figure, with a 42–28 advantage for the Aces, including an impressive job limiting New York center Jonquel Jones.
“This s--- isn’t easy,” said Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, who led the team in scoring with 19, below her average for these playoffs. “And we saw that tonight.”
Las Vegas’s most impressive defensive job was on New York guard Sabrina Ionescu. The first two games of this series had been defined in large part by her ability to score on all three levels. The Aces didn’t let her score on any of them in Game 3. They held her scoreless for the entirety of the first three quarters and kept her to just four points overall. (It was her lowest scoring performance this year, save the last game of the regular season, when she got limited minutes in a contest with nothing to play for.) They locked her down on the perimeter, but they did their best to keep her from driving, too. She took only seven shots.
“They gave Sabrina very little space, so active with their hands, getting deflections,” said Liberty coach Sandy Brondello. “It felt very physical.”
It was a show of force of what this Aces team can be at its best. It won them one more game—and nothing more just yet.
“The minute you get comfortable, that’s when you’re exposed,” Gray said. “We haven’t done anything yet.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Aces Finally Lock in to Dismantle Liberty and Stay Alive.
