Liberty, ‘best team all year,’ make WNBA Finals

LAS VEGAS — All season long, the Las Vegas Aces haven’t shied away from acknowledging the difficulties of three-peating. Following a rocky regular season and with a tough semifinal matchup against the top-seeded New York Liberty, the No. 4 Aces faced a greater uphill battle than ever as they tried to return to the mountaintop.

But Las Vegas finally ran out of gas Sunday, its quest for history falling short when it dropped Game 4 to the Liberty 76-62 and lost the best-of-five series 3-1.

New York, making its own push for history in hopes of a franchise-first title, will appear in the WNBA Finals for the sixth time and second straight. Its opponent will be determined Tuesday when Minnesota and Connecticut duke it out in the other semifinal in a winner-take-all Game 5 in Minneapolis.

The Liberty — who fell short of a championship last year at the hands of Las Vegas — beat the Aces in six of their seven matchups this year, including all three in the regular season.

“They’ve been the best team all year — let’s be real,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said after the game. “Their group earned it. They earned it all year.”

Yet two-time MVP Breanna Stewart stayed resolute: “We haven’t done anything yet,” said Stewart, who finished 19 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 blocks. “This was a tough series, an emotional series, for a number of different reasons … [but there’s] just the feeling of not satisfied.”

Only once in the WNBA has there been a three-peat, when the Houston Comets dominated the early years of the sport from 1997 to 2000. This millennium, only the New York Yankees (1998-2000) and Los Angeles Lakers (2000-02) managed to do it in their respective leagues. No team has achieved the feat in that span in the NHL or NFL.

“Just doing it, it’s hard,” said A’ja Wilson, Las Vegas’ three-time MVP, on the three-peat quest. “Every team looks different. Your team looks different. Nothing’s the same. Everybody wants to beat you. You’re everybody’s Super Bowl. That’s hard to come into.”

Though the Aces trailed most of the way Sunday, they stayed within striking distance, down just two heading into the fourth quarter. A 23-11 frame from New York, which it started with a 16-2 burst, made all the difference.

The game reflected some of the Aces’ struggles throughout the season. Wilson led the charge with 19 points on 53.8% shooting. But the guards, who this summer couldn’t replicate their efficiency from Las Vegas’ previous two championship runs, didn’t help Wilson enough. Kelsey Plum, Tiffany Hayes, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young combined for 12-of-42 shooting (28.6%), and the team as a whole hit just 7 of 30 attempts from the 3-point arc (23.3%). After Hammon was frustrated that her team allowed a “layup clinic” in the first two games of the series, New York got plenty of those easy looks down the stretch Sunday afternoon.

The disparity left Hammon comparing her group to the Minnesota Lynx — a squad with good talent that’s an excellent team. Her Aces, she believed, had excellent talent but were just a good team this season.

“You don’t have it every year. It’s not the way this works. You don’t get to flip a switch,” Hammon said. “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.

“And New York’s had really great will and determination this whole year. We talked a lot of smack last year. I’m sure they heard it, and they got to smack us this year.”

The Aces’ season was the rockiest they’ve had in Hammon’s three-year tenure. They started 6-6, recording by mid-June the same number of losses they had the entirety of 2023. Their head of the snake offensively, point guard Chelsea Gray, missed the first 13 games of the season due to a foot injury she suffered in last year’s Finals.

Then there were the multiple off-court controversies to deal with: The league has been investigating the franchise since May to determine whether it granted impermissible benefits and circumvented the salary cap. Then in August, former Aces forward Dearica Hamby filed a federal lawsuit against the team and the league alleging pregnancy discrimination and that she was subjected to intimidation and retaliation by the franchise.

Las Vegas “could have folded a lot earlier,” Gray said Sunday, and managed to play its best basketball of the year by the end of the regular season, entering the playoffs winning nine of its final 10 games.

Yet after a glimmer of hope with a resounding Game 3 win Friday, which kept its season alive after dropping both games in Brooklyn, Hammon and her team sat processing its first campaign since 2021 that didn’t end in jubilation.

“We’ve never done exit meetings [before]. We’ve done exit partying,” Hammon quipped, before holding back tears as she noted the pain of Wilson’s historic season ending without a championship.

“We hurt for each other,” Gray said. “All the work that we put in, the highs and lows of this season, injuries, not playing, in and out. You want it to come together with a trophy at the end, right? So I think the hurt is there because we wanted the trophy at the end.”

“It sucks, it stings,” Wilson said. “But I’m very proud about the group that we had.”

Hammon has referred to New York as a team “put together to take us out,” something that was even more true after this past offseason. Entering Year 2 of their superteam era following the acquisitions of Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot, the Liberty retooled their bench, most significantly adding 6-foot-4 German rookie guard Leonie Fiebich.

New York’s length and improved defense held the Aces to 32.8% shooting Sunday as it continued its streak of not suffering back-to-back losses since late May. Fiebich struggled with foul trouble but still finished with a game-best +28 plus/minus. The team’s improved chemistry and understanding of how to win gritty allowed it to put the game away and avoid extending the series to a winner-take-all Game 5.

Sabrina Ionescu (22 points) emphasized that “no hurdle” had been overcome by sending the Aces home, while acknowledging how the Liberty’s battles against Las Vegas had “made us a better team.”

“It’s a testament to their togetherness, their experience, how hard it is that they’re wanting to go out there and be their best every night,” Ionescu said of the Aces. “They’ve laid down the foundation, and they continue to motivate everyone in the league to just want to be better and want to win championships.”

Yet the scars that the Liberty suffered last year are still there. Even with a return to the playoff’s final series on tap.

“We went to the Finals last year,” Stewart said, “and we didn’t do nothing.”

But with two games guaranteed at home, a lengthier break than their ultimate Finals opponent and the momentum from sending home the two-time defending champs in tow, the Liberty are three wins away from ensuring a different result.