Aces Coach Starts Trend With Hoodie-and-Blazer Look, But Las Vegas Drops 16-Point Loss To Atlanta Tuesday
By Cassandra Cousineau of LVSportsBiz.com
A’ja Wilson has her vintage jerseys, Kelsey Plum sports highly sought after kicks, and Aces head coach Becky Hammon shows up on the sidelines wearing what is now her signature gameday uniform, the hoodie and blazer. That’s the working uniform for the entire Aces coaching staff in fact. A black blazer securely fit over a snug, white hooded sweatshirt.
It’s not like the Aves coach has started a new line of hoodies or blazers. “If I like something I just get it,” Hammon told LVSportsBiz.com before the Atlanta Dream/Las Vegas Aces game at Michelob Ultra Arena Tuesday evening.
By all accounts, Hammon’s first year at the helm in Las Vegas has been about rituals and routines. Her starting five of Wilson, Plum, Dearica Hamby, Jackie Young, and Chelsea Gray have played more than 60 percent of the team’s minutes. With the exception of games when Young and Gray were unavailable because to injury, Hammon has forewent most bench substitutions and heavily relied on the starters.
Gray, the veteran starting point guard, acknowledged her coach’s style as an effective one. “She is holding everyone accountable top to bottom,” Gray said. “It didn’t take her any time to do that and be completely honest with us.”
After playing 16 years in the WNBA, Hammon still has a learning curve as a coach in the league and is warming up to nuances that only come with on the job experience. She’s used to wearing a uniform and carried the casual professional hoodie-and-blazer outfit all the way to the sidelines of the WNBA All-Star game in Chicago where she was the head coach of Team Wilson.
Tonight, the hoodie-and-blazer coaching outfit could not stop an 11-14 Atlanta Dream team before 5,952 fans at Mandalay Bay.
The Aces fell behind after one quarter, 35-18, and never recovered.
They did stage a rally in the third quarter, cutting 16-point halftime deficit to six points at 58-52. But Atlanta finished the third quarter on a 12-4 run and led after three quarters, 70-56.
Hammon nearly pulled her starting five midway through the final quarter. But the coach let them play and the lead was sliced again before the Dream polished off the Aces by the 92-76 final. Wilson had 22 points, Young scored 18 and Plum added 17.
The Dream were led by Tiffany Hayes with 31, while Rhyne Howard scored 24. Atlanta improved to 12-14.
As Wilson put it after the 16-point loss: “We just gotta get our shit together.”
The Aces made only 36.6 percent of their field goal attempts — the lowest percentage of the season.
Athletes are creatures of habit, and at her core Hammon is an athlete. She stands five-foot-six and wrapped both arms around her chest in the opening of the third quarter, seemingly holding in what’s on her chest as officials call Wilson for her first personal foul of the game. With just 10 games left in the season, teams around the W are just starting to catch on to a few coaching tendencies. Las Vegas was one of the first teams to incorporate a zone defense this season.
The Aces dropped to 18-8 on the season. They play at home Thursday and Saturday. Las Vegas leads Seattle by a half-game in the Western Conference, as the Storm is 17-8.
And It remains to be seen if the hoodie-and-blazer look will be embraced by other coaches as well.
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The Raiders’ new team president, Sandra Douglass Morgan, sat a seat away from her boss, Raiders/Aces owner Mark Davis.
The UNLV women’s basketball team also attended the game. The UNLV women’s team players lined up on the court and were recognized during a break in the first half. A UNLV women’s basketball video played in the arena during the recognition showed a brief scene of Lady Rebels players boarding a chartered aircraft — something even WNBA teams do not do as they fly on general commercial airlines.
