‘I feel like I already won’: How Aces’ Plum has persevered through tough season

LAS VEGAS — Kelsey Plum wasn’t herself. Projectile vomiting throughout the Las Vegas Aces’ opening game of the WNBA playoffs will have that effect.

But the guard also knew she needed to push past her subpar performance, and found herself figuring out the path ahead the next day in a peculiar setting.

“I sat at a sushi bar,” Plum said at an ensuing news conference. “And was just like, ‘You know what, I’m going to throw Game 1 out the window.'”

A’ja Wilson, seated next to Plum, stared at her Aces teammate and looked a bit queasy herself.

“After you threw up, you went and got sushi?” Wilson said.

“Hey,” Plum replied, “it worked.”

Indeed, Plum and the Aces overcame the Seattle Storm in the first round. But the semifinals have been a different story for the two-time defending WNBA champions. The New York Liberty lead 2-0 after taking the first two games at home in the best-of-five series. But whether it was Plum navigating a high-profile divorce and helping the Aces overcome their most regular-season losses in five years, or Las Vegas chasing a three-peat amid injuries and off-court controversies, the season has been defined by tuning out the noise.

Now the Aces must win three in a row against the Liberty, starting with Friday’s Game 3 in Las Vegas (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2). No WNBA team has ever rallied to win a series when down 0-2. And Las Vegas has lost five in a row to New York this year, including three regular-season meetings.

Plum and the Aces hope they can regain their magic in Las Vegas. But whatever the outcome of this season, Plum said she is glad she has battled through it.

“I’m proud I showed up this year,” Plum told ESPN. “The fact that I’m playing basketball now is a great achievement. Obviously, we really want another championship. But I also feel like I already won. Everything else is kind of house money.”

As passionate and outgoing a player as Plum is, she would prefer her private life to stay private. But that wasn’t to be.

“Going through a very public divorce is something I was not expecting,” Plum said of the dissolution of her marriage to former NFL player Darren Waller. “It felt like the rug got taken out from under me. I think people may look at me like, ‘Oh, she’s super tough.’ But this one really broke me.

“I deleted social media off my phone. I got a new phone, and don’t have very many people’s numbers. I turned off TV and just got into reading my Bible. I’ll just say that emotionally, I’ll be feeling this for a long time.”

Plum credits those closest to her, including her Aces teammates, with helping her.

“I’m just grateful I have really great people around me to help pick up the pieces,” Plum said. “But what I’m most proud of is, all throughout the ups and downs, it hasn’t taken away my joy.”

She said that’s the happiness she still gets from basketball. Even in a 27-13 season where everything didn’t go the Aces’ way as much as it did in 2023’s 34-6 season, Plum is thankful for the routine and camaraderie.

“The biggest thing is making sure she understands that we’re always here,” said Wilson, who like Plum was a No. 1 WNBA draft pick. “I have her back no matter what. It could be those dark days we’ve all been down that may look different for each of us, but we get it.

“I’m going to be there each step of the way. Whether that’s getting on her nerves, leaving her alone a little, checking in on her.”

Their seven seasons playing together, including on the U.S. Olympic team, makes their communication second nature.

“I feel like we definitely have a language of our own,” Wilson said. “We know how to get under each other’s skin, but at the same time make each other better.”

Like the Aces, Plum has had her peaks and valleys in these playoffs. She scored just 2 points on 1-of-8 shooting in Game 1 vs. Seattle. After the sushi and a mind reset, she had 29 points on 11-of-5 shooting to lead the Aces to a Game 2 victory that clinched the series.

In Game 1 against New York on Sunday, Plum had 24 points, shooting 9-of-17. In Game 2, she was one of the targets of coach Becky Hammon’s wrath during a timeout and finished with just 6 points after going 2-of-9.

The Aces have talked a lot about how this year has been more challenging than the past two seasons, which both ended with championships. Las Vegas was without point guard Chelsea Gray for the first 12 games as she rehabbed the foot injury that kept her out of last year’s title-clinching Game 4 of the WNBA Finals.

Las Vegas was 6-6 when Gray returned, and the Aces then started to look more like themselves. Yet their offensive efficiency, defensive reliability and championship aura haven’t stayed consistent.

Hammon attributes it in part to the rest of the league working hard to catch the Aces and how difficult it is to stay hungrier than teams like New York, which has never won the league championship.

Now, the Aces must find that hunger themselves. For Plum, it means digging deep into reserves she has built up over the years.

As successful as her college career was at Washington — taking the program to its first Final Four in 2016 and setting the NCAA career scoring record in 2017 — she recalls having to do a lot of self-reflection about balancing who she was as a person as well as a player.

When Plum thinks back to her WNBA rookie season as the No. 1 pick in 2017 — for a franchise at the end of its run in San Antonio before going to Las Vegas the next year — she shakes her head. She didn’t know where she fit into a team that wasn’t sure where it was headed.

“It just felt like quicksand,” Plum said.

During Plum’s first three seasons in the WNBA, she averaged 8.5, 9.5 and 8.6 points. In 2020, she tore her Achilles tendon and missed the season, which she calls a blessing in disguise because she recharged while she rehabbed. In 2021, Plum came off the bench all season, earning her Sixth Player of the Year — an award she never wanted. She was determined to start again.

Working out in late 2021, Plum got a call from new Aces coach Hammon, who had taken over for Bill Laimbeer. Plum had a sometimes rocky relationship with Laimbeer: She appreciated the things he taught her, but not always his tone.

Hammon told Plum her initial impression of the team was that Plum coming off the bench had worked. Plum got off that call too furious to even finish her workout.

“I remember hanging up the phone,” Plum said, “and thinking, ‘I’m going to come into training camp like a possessed human being. I’m going to run everyone into the ground and make it very clear that this is my spot.'”

Hammon laughs remembering it, because Plum did exactly that. She has started and averaged 20.2, 18.7 and 17.8 points while being an All-Star the past three seasons. She won Olympic gold in 3×3 in 2021 and in 5-on-5 this year.

“I don’t think she felt valued before,” Hammon said. “I’ve tried to put a lot of trust in her and let her grow. Not only as a basketball player, but off the court. She has had so much growth, through some really hard stuff. She’s just really blossomed into this beautiful person.”

Iowa’s Caitlin Clark passed Plum’s NCAA record to much acclaim in February. At the time, Plum seemed almost disengaged from her spot in history. But she then explained that she didn’t remember it as a joyful period. It became too much about reaching numbers and not about the essence of why she plays.

That’s what Plum said she always wants to hold onto. The Aces have their backs to the wall now. But whatever happens, Plum knows she stood up to the many challenges.

“You go through things in life and build this level of resilience,” she said. “Sometimes you say, ‘Why is this happening?’ But then you realize if you didn’t go through things before, you wouldn’t be able to handle it now.”