Las Vegas Aces Look To Close Out WNBA Championship In Connecticut Tonight
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
By Cassandra Cousineau, LVSportsBiz.com WNBA/Aces Writer
Aces Head Coach Becky Hammon is scrappy.
She built a playing career out of being overlooked. And as a head coach that mentality has followed her.
“I’m used to people not picking me; I don’t know if you’re aware. I just do me,” she said after the Aces won Game 2 at home.
Even though her team has been the favorite to win a WNBA Championship all season, she doesn’t want them to lose any competitive fire.
Tonight, Las Vegas is in Connecticut to play the Sun in a potential close-out game to secure the first major league professional sports championship for Las Vegas.
Along with A’ja Wilson’s MVP and Defensive Player of the Year accolades, Hammon, and her coaching staff, have been just as big of a factor in putting them in this position.
Las Vegas is in position to become the fourth team in league history with an MVP-winner, Coach of the Year and the WNBA title in the same season.
With three number one WNBA draft picks in Wilson, Jackie Young, and Kelsey Plum, the team has carried the expectations of potential for several seasons under former coach Bill Laimbeer.
They got close to WNBA gold twice, but were swept in the 2020 Finals by the Seattle Storm, and came up one game short in the WNBA Semifinals against the Brittney Griner-led Phoenix Mercury.
One of the biggest difference makers this season has been how the team behaves well before tipoff.
“We got real competitive in everything we do,” said Hammon on a media call. “We compete hard in practice. I want every player on the roster to want to win every possession.”
After the 2021 season, Laimbeer, who had served as the team’s head coach since the franchise relocated from San Antonio to Las Vegas, stepped down. Hammon inherited an offense that had ranked dead last in three-point attempts the year before her arrival. This season, they took the third most outside shots in the league while remaining efficient.
“It’s about putting these ladies in a position to win a championship that’s been my focus, that’s why I took this job, I felt I had the talent to do it and I felt I could build relationships and build the culture in the right way for us to put ourselves in a position to win a championship,” Hammon said.
The Sioux Falls, South Dakota native spent seven years as an assistant to San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, and was passed over by the Portland Trail Blazers and Orlando Magic before Aces owner, Mark Davis came calling.
“I’m not here to prove anybody wrong. I’m here to build a championship basketball team. These ladies make my job easier by the way they play,” she added.
When asked did she want her team to enjoy the moment more, instead of maintaining a strictly business mentality. “Being about business is being in the moment. Being competitive is this moment. That’s where we need to be.”
Along with letting the guards loose from the three-point-line, a core tenant of Hammon’s coaching style has been After Time Outs. Hammon has been money when her team has possession of the ball and calls for Plum and Chelsea Gray after a time out. Her offensive sets have even caught the attention of LeBron James.
Hammon’s staff includes Natalie Nakase who earned a spot as a walk-on with UCLA; Charlene Thomas-Swinson, an assistant coach at LSU from 2015-21 under current Aces President Nikki Fargas, and Tyler Marsh, who served as an assistant coach with the Indiana Pacers. They’re a tight knit group who also wear the same hoodie blazer uniforms for every game.
Should the Aces complete their championship run by beating the Sun tonight, Hammon could become the first first-year head coach to win a WNBA title since Van Chancellor in the inaugural 1997 season. A win tonight would also bring the Las Vegas Aces, and the former San Antonio Stars, their first championship in franchise history.
For Wilson, managing the pressure of this one game comes down to perspective. She has repeated multiple times, “This is a business trip. We’re professional basketball players.” It’s a different mentality from their first trip to the Finals, and opposite of the “just happy to be there rookie mentality” she said when the team played in the WNBA COVID bubble in west Florida in 2020.
The team will be on the road without the record sold-out crowds it has enjoyed in Las Vegas. Fan viewership is still expected to be high across the WNBA streaming and broadcasting platforms. Despite Game 1 of the WNBA Finals going up against the first Sunday of the NFL regular season, the Las Vegas Aces’ 67-64 victory over the Connecticut Sun still averaged 550,000 viewers on ABC — making it the most watched Game 1 in five years.
It’s expected that Connecticut will come out strong. The team that battled back to earn a decisive fifth game win in their WNBA semifinal series against the Chicago Sky. Jonquel Jones, last season’s WNBA MVP, is looking forward to having home crowd support. “We’re just taking it one game at a time now. That’s all we can do. We’re gonna go back home, like you said, we’re gonna have our fans behind us, who’ve been with us the entire season, and we’re gonna use that to propel us to win. That’s all we can do.”
Sun guard Courtney Williams left Las Vegas with one goal in mind. “We gotta rock out. We got a Game 3 and we gotta get to it.”
