“We just buckled down. We understood the assignment and knew what it was going to take,” A’ja Wilson said. “I think we saw in the first half that this isn’t going to be easy, and this is the playoffs. This isn’t a regular season game, so things we would do in regular season, we have to literally times 10 in the playoffs and I think it kind of woke us up. They kinda punched us in the mouth first half, but second half I think we just kind of figured it out, and it just clicked with us on the defensive end. We have to buckle down, no if, ands or butts about it. That’s where we can then fuel our offense. We just started to lock in more, turned up our physicality. Becky yelled at us in the locker room, obviously that woke us up. We just kind of took it personal and I love that we could do that in-game and make that adjustment.”
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The Aces started the game a step slow on both sides of the ball and found themselves down nine after one quarter. They didn’t look like the Aces who had won nine of their last 10 coming into the postseason. As Becky Hammon put it, “we were running in mud”. That feeling continued into the second quarter where the Aces gave up 24 points but were able to cut into the Seattle lead.
Then, coming out of the locker room in the second half, the energy changed. Hammon gave one of her patented half time “talks” and the team found their groove. They gave up 23 points in the third but found themselves down just one heading into the fourth. Then the defense turned up to 10.
To figure out what has changed for the Aces defense over the last stretch of the season, you have to go back to a hot Tuesday night in Dallas. The Aces defense has been a much-improved unit ever since their 93-90 loss to the Dallas Wings on Aug. 27. In that game, the team gave up 32 points in the fourth quarter to blow an eight-point lead going into the final frame. Hammon has emphasized how that game was a turning point for the team and helped them find themselves again on the defensive side of the ball.
“After that loss in Dallas where we couldn’t hang on a new lead, I just went crazy on them,” Hammon said. “In the sense of like, explain to me how this team, who’s basically the same team [as] last year holds [Dallas], who was basically the same team, to scoreless in five minutes in a closeout game in game three, then you give up 32. That doesn’t make sense to me. This was by far the toughest season for us, losing sucks. Nobody likes to lose. There were … different reasons why, but I thought primarily our reason why was ourselves. We have that little documentary, Aces versus everybody this year. It was Aces versus Aces, and looking in the mirror and seeing who we really want to become?”
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Since that game on the 27th, the Aces have given up an average of 74 points per game, which is six below their season average. They also went 9-1 and one during those 10 games. Las Vegas only gave up more than 80 points just once since that night in late August. That came in the final game of the regular season when the Aces “Core Four” sat out to rest for the playoffs against the Wings. The defense on Sunday evening started slow but when they needed it, it returned to recent form.
The Aces defense showed incredible activity in the fourth quarter, flying all over the floor, helping each other and finishing almost every possession with a rebound. In the first half, Nneka Ogwumike was killing the Aces, scoring 13 points on 6-12 shooting. In the second half, she didn’t score a single point. Every time she touched the ball around the paint, the Aces were double teaming her and forcing her to make long cross court passes to her teammates. It worked to perfection.
On top of holding Seattle without a field goal in the fourth quarter, the Aces forced six Storm turnovers. They were up pressuring the ball and disrupting every action Seattle tried to run. Las Vegas also held Jewell Loyd to just six points on two of eight shooting. You could see with every stop, the Aces confidence growing and Seattle’s deflating. Ogwumike said the Storm were “gassed” in the fourth and the Aces were “playing with a fire”.
Sunday was also the day A’ja Wilson was announced and presented with her MVP trophy after being voted as the second ever unanimous MVP. Wilson struggled in the first half but like the Aces defense, came alive in the second half. She scored 15 points in the third quarter, which was the most she’s every scored in a quarter in her career. She also put up a case for defensive player of the year, protecting the paint and blocking five shots.
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“That first half was ugly boy,” Wilson said. “That’s just the way the game goes. Sometimes you just got to get out of the mud, and I love doing that, because it keeps my mind going. I think my teammates just continue to never let me doubt myself and I sometimes do doubt myself, and they always pick me up. They just kept feeding me the ball, and then that’s when I just started to calm down. I think I was rushing a lot in the first half, because I’m like, oh, it’s there, let me just go and attack. But, in the second half, the game kind of just settled down for me, and I really started to dissect the defense and what they were doing. That was kind of when I got rocking and rolling.”
While the Aces MVP was spectacular in the second half, if you asked her, she would say Tiffany Hayes was the teams MVP on Sunday night. Hayes scored 20 points off the bench and gave the Aces a jolt of energy on both sides of the floor. She gave them energy early in the game when they were struggling and had some incredibly tough finishes at the rim late, including a remarkable reverse from well below the basket. It also helps she was a menace on defense too, swiping five steals and playing stout defense on Skylar Diggins-Smith.
Hayes joined the Aces midseason after coming out of retirement. The 35-year-old is playing a different role than she ever has before, coming off the bench. However, she has impacted the Aces on both sides of the floor and Hammon doesn’t know where the team would be without her. Sunday night was also big for Hayes because her mom attended the game. Here mom doesn’t like flying, but she got on a plane to see her daughter play and shine under the brightest lights.
“I think having all that experience, plus being here surrounded by people with experience, lots of playoff experience, lots of learning experience,” Hayes said of how her playoff experience helped her in Game 1. “I’m just grateful to be surrounded by that, because even if I fall off the track a little bit, I have them to pull me right back up, and I just want to shout out my mom was here too. She was my coach all throughout growing up, and she’s never flown before, and she’s flew out here and I’m glad she was able to come.”
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As the Aces head into Game two on Tuesday night, the priority will remain the same, play solid defense. That is what Hammon has harped on for her team all season long. In back-to-back postseasons, the Aces have held an opponent scoreless in the fourth quarter for a stretch of 5+ minutes. Will it happen again? Probably not, but the Aces know that mentality is what it will take to collect their third straight championship and it’s going to have to come from all 12 members of the team.
“It’s playoff basketball. It’s one of those moments where a lot of the stars are going to cancel out,” Wilson said. “A lot of things are going to happen, but it’s the ones that people least expect that shine the brightest. That’s what I love about it, because it’s not just going to be one person. It’s going to take all of us, one through 12, and I think you saw that tonight. It’s never going to be easy, and I feel like the game ones are always really hard. We lost game our first year. It’s hard, even though you’re home and it’s everything. Seattle’s coming in with a completely different mindset, and so we have to understand how to focus on us and not get caught up in a lot of the extra stuff.”
