Aces Brandish Their ‘Weapons,’ Rely on Bench in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals

LAS VEGAS — “There’s a lot of options, right?” Becky Hammon said. “And I only can play five at a time.”

This is not the sort of comment the Aces head coach would have made about either of the previous two rosters that she took to the WNBA Finals. Although the 2022 and ’23 championship Las Vegas teams had plenty of virtues, “depth” was never really among them, and no one would have ever believed otherwise. That was a tradeoff worth making then: If those squads were notably top-heavy, it meant they could generally win by sheer force, and that worked for them often enough. But the rate of change has sped up in the WNBA. The game shifted enough in the last few years to prompt some alterations for Hammon and the Aces. They needed to give themselves more options.

And that paid off for them in Game 1 of the Finals on Friday. Their 89–86 win over the Mercury felt like a statement on the freedom of choice. Not everything worked for the Aces. But they had the flexibility to experiment until they figured out what did. They watched two of their three leading scorers come off the bench. They switched their man-to-man defense to a zone in the second half. They got a crucial defensive stop on the final possession of the game by inserting a player who had not seen the floor all night. Toggling between small and big, slow and fast, Las Vegas ultimately pushed just enough of the right buttons.

“We have weapons,” Hammon said. “We want to use them all. We’re harder to guard that way.”

No one illustrates that better than reserve guard Dana Evans. Across three teams in five years, Evans has spent the majority of her pro career working off the bench. But she has come to embrace what that can mean: Every game started on the sidelines is a chance to show off her problem-solving. “You have to be a student of the game,” Evans said earlier this week. “You have to know what’s not working, what is working, and when you go out there, you don’t want to make the same mistakes that we’ve been making.” Las Vegas traded for her this winter in hopes that she would eventually solve a few specific problems for the Aces.

Evans did that in Game 1. She dropped 21 points on 5-of-6 three-point shooting, with four steals, three assists and zero turnovers. The 5’ 6” Evans spent a fair portion of the game being guarded by 6’ 4” Phoenix forward DeWanna Bonner. But the apparent mismatch only felt like a reminder that speed can easily beat length. Vegas needed to start playing faster without playing reckless. It got there with Evans. 

Despite the contributions from Evans and fellow reserve guard Jewell Loyd, who scored 18, much of the game was still played from behind for the Aces. They had been lit up from deep in the first half by Phoenix guard Kahleah Copper. And so Hammon decided that her team would change up its defense entirely after halftime. This is not a group that plays zone very often. But Hammon believed the Aces had played it just enough to make it work on the fly in the Finals. 

“Even though we don’t practice it, we still understand our rules when it comes to the zone,” said MVP Aces center A’ja Wilson. “I think we played it enough throughout the season to trust one another that we’re going to be there.”

It worked. Copper took half as many shots in the second half as she had in the first. She did not make another three.  

“Give them credit for mixing up their defense,” Phoenix coach Nate Tibbetts said. “That was a good adjustment. We didn’t handle it well.”

Yet there was still a chance to win here for the Mercury. (This group has proven itself too good for anything else.) Phoenix entered the fourth quarter with a narrow lead and trailed by just one with under a minute to play. Alyssa Thomas had a chance to pull back ahead with a pair of free throws. She missed them both. (There surely has not been a more raucous crowd reception this year for the Aces’ beloved pizza-free-throw promotion, “Miss Twice, Get a Slice,” guaranteeing free pizza when an opposing player misses two foul shots.) But it still was not over for the Mercury. Down by three, with 13.5 seconds on the clock after a timeout, Phoenix had an opportunity to draw up the final play of the game. 

But the Aces had one more different look to show the Mercury. Kiah Stokes had spent the entire game on the bench. Hammon subbed the defensively minded veteran in for the most critical possession of the game. It paid off: Stokes spun her way through a series of switches, briefly finding herself on each member of the Mercury’s Big 3, spending time on Thomas, Copper and Satou Sabally. 

There were no good looks to be found. Phoenix’s final shot was only a desperation heave. It was one more opportunity for the Aces to showcase the range of their options here. Their opponent had no answer.

“We’re going to play our style,” Tibbetts said of making adjustments in this potentially long series. “They’re going to play their style, and the best team is going to win.”

But there was something telling in that fairly standard bit of coach speak. Yes, these rosters will play their respective styles, inasmuch as they have all year. But it can be a real luxury for that style to keep changing.

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