How the Las Vegas Aces improbably achieved dynasty status – Las Vegas Sun News

In a year where the Las Vegas Aces strung together a historic 17 straight victories through their first playoff game, it only made sense that they would end the season in style and on another winning streak.

The Aces prevailed in five consecutive contests including a four-game sweep of the Phoenix Mercury in the first-ever best-of-seven WNBA Finals to win the championship trophy for the third time in four years. No team had won that many titles in that short amount of time since the original Houston Comets, which won four in a row when the league started from 1997-2000.

Champagne flowed and tears were shed as the once-again champions tried to describe the feeling brought on by that feat, after knocking off the Mercury 97-86 on October 10 in Phoenix for the clinching game. 

“I’d say greatness is who you’re around, that’s true greatness,” WNBA Finals and regular-season Most Valuable Player A’ja Wilson said afterwards. “This group right here, we’re battle-tested from top to bottom. We showed up to work every single day with the mindset of being great.”

It just didn’t come easily this year, but that’s what makes the 2025 WNBA title arguably more satisfying than the previous championships in 2022 and 2023.

Three years ago, in the Aces’ inaugural season under coach Becky Hammon, beating the Connecticut Sun for the franchise’s first ring felt like a sigh of a relief more than anything. There was a sense that the then-core of Wilson, Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum had underachieved by falling short the previous three seasons, especially after adding All-Star point guard Chelsea Gray in 2021.

But Gray and Hammon pushed Las Vegas over the top in 2022 with a WNBA Finals MVP nod for the former. Seeing the first major professional championship parade down the Strip will always be a moment to remember, but it felt overdue.

Then, in 2023, bringing home the trophy was expected. The Aces had the best season in league history and rolled to a championship series win over the Liberty with Wilson transcending to an all-time great level with her first Finals MVP.

But salary-cap leagues like the WNBA aren’t designed for the victors to stay on top for long. The Aces declined last year with a semifinal exit and then really seemed to fall off this season after Plum forced her way out and was traded for Jewell Loyd.

The fit was clunky for the first three months of the season, and the Aces sat at .500 on August 2 after a 111-58 loss to the then championship favorite Minnesota Lynx—the WNBA’s largest-ever margin of victory. Some wondered if the Aces would even advance to the postseason at that point.

“There was a lot of doubt besides us in that locker room,” Gray said. “We had a lot of confidence in each other,(especially with Wilson and Young). I’m really proud of how we stayed the course and trusted the process the entire time.”

An assortment of emotions may have accompanied the first two championships, but the third one produced nothing but pure bliss because of how unlikely it seemed earlier in the year.

“This one hits different because it was different,” Hammon said. “There was probably a lot more adversity than any of us anticipated. At the end of the day, we’re humans that wanted to get it right and get it right together.”

The playoff run truly wound up a microcosm of the Aces’ whole season. After the win streak ended, there were real questions about whether Las Vegas could rediscover the magic.

It took a would-be game winner from Seattle’s Erica Wheeler to miss the mark—as the lights went out a split second prematurely at Michelob Ultra Arena to memorably cause some confusion—for Las Vegas to avoid elimination in the first round.

The injury-ravaged Indiana Fever then took the Aces to the brink in the second round despite being massive underdogs. Las Vegas had to outlast Indiana in overtime of the decisive Game 5 of the best-of-five-series just to get back to the Finals.

That’s where the Aces regained their groove, as the betting odds only painted them as the smallest favorite against the Mercury but they rolled in a fashion reminiscent of the way they caught fire in August and September.

Wilson created further distance between herself and everyone else as the best player in the world, but the championship wasn’t only her doing. The constantly overlooked Young carried the Aces during an uncharacteristic off night from Wilson in Game 2 and was lethally efficient in the pair of tilts at Phoenix.

The 33-year-old Gray looked like a prime version of herself after having slightly declined throughout the regular season. And Hammon officially declared Loyd, who moved to the bench to spark the Aces’ late-season climb, the final member of the team’s new “Big Four.”

“Becky was definitely the person that believed in me from the start,” Loyd said. “I was kind of written off and exiled but I ended up in the promised land.”

Las Vegas has been the pinnacle of women’s professional basketball for a half-decade now, but it looked quite different during the original heyday. Only four of the 10 players who logged time in the final game this year were members of the last championship team with starting power forward Kierstan Bell joining Wilson, Young and Gray.

There may have been a gap year and the roster makeup might have changed, but the Aces are now undoubtedly a dynasty. And while Hammon was respectful of all the other great championship teams that came before them, she said the Aces should stand alone given how much the league has evolved.

“These ladies are at the top of the game,” Hammon said. “It’s the best basketball the W has ever seen.”

This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.