When Kelsey Plum started chirping at New York basketball super fan Spike Lee during Game 1 of the WNBA semifinals between the Las Vegas Aces and the New York Liberty on Sunday, people who have watched Plum play knew what was coming: A scoring outburst.
Known as one of the league’s best trash talkers, Plum told reporters afterward she couldn’t repeat what she and Lee said to each other, but that she encouraged him to “talk louder.” She erupted for 24 points that day, keeping the Aces within striking distance.
The issue is that her backcourt mates didn’t match her output. And after Game 1, Plum didn’t care much about her personal stat line.
“It’s a loss, that’s the only thing I really see,” she said. “That’s the only statistic that matters.”
The two-time defending champion Aces are staring at a daunting 0-2 hole after dropping Game 1 (87-77) and Game 2 (88-84) in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Game 3 — and if necessary, Game 4 — will take place in Vegas on Friday and Sunday, respectively. Aces fans are hoping that back in the friendly confines of Michelob ULTRA Arena, Vegas guards Plum, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young will be more like their previous postseason selves.
While forward A’ja Wilson unanimously won this season’s MVP, Aces coach Becky Hammon is the first to say that when it comes to the postseason, “our trio of guards has always been the separation factor for us.”
So what happens when that trio goes missing?
After a rocky start to 2024, mostly due to Gray nursing a lingering leg injury and sitting out, the Aces won nine of their last 10 regular season games, before sweeping Seattle in the first round. (The only loss was a 75-71 defeat in New York, a game Wilson missed.) They looked like the Aces of old — led by those guards and Wilson, all of whom were WNBA All-Stars and Olympians in the summer.
But Vegas hasn’t ruled the league the last two years purely because of its star power — it’s because of each of those individual stars’ unique skillsets.
Plum can score in a variety of ways, and takes pride in being able to get buckets even when a game has no flow. She’s stronger than she looks, can finish inside through contact and drain 3s from the perimeter.
Young is maybe the strongest guard in the WNBA pound-for-pound, a player who can bully defenders on the block.
“Plum, specifically because of her pace, her ability to get to the rim and make rim reads, to create for herself and her teammates, is a huge factor for us,” Hammon said. “Her play and Jackie’s play both really impact our wins and losses. When they’re good, we typically are good.”
Gray has been so good the last two postseasons she earned the nickname Point Gawd; she was the 2022 Finals MVP when the Aces dispatched the Connecticut Sun in four games. Gray averaged 18.3 points, 6.0 assists and shot an eye-popping 58.5% from the field that series.
“We have games where Plum will have 25, Jackie will have 25 but really, it’s the way (the three of them) complement each other,” Hammon said. “It’s a great combo when they’re all clicking.”
But through two games, that hasn’t happened. At all.
Plum had 24 points in Game 1, but just six in Game 2, burdened by foul trouble.
Young has scored 17 points in each game but is shooting a combined 11-of-29 from the floor, just 38%.
Gray has been the worst of the three. She scored four points on 2-of-7 shooting in Game 1 and 14 points on 5-of-12 shooting in Game 2, but has been uncharacteristically sloppy with the ball, dribbling off her foot and letting it slip through her hands out of bounds.
Wilson needs space to operate, especially because when she can get the ball one-on-one, she’s practically guaranteed to score. The best way to get that spacing is with quick ball movement and that comes with having perimeter players who command attention, pulling defenders away from the paint. This is particularly true with New York, which boasts a lot of length defensively (there was debate after Game 1 if Breanna Stewart’s wingspan is 7-foot-1 or 6-foot-10.75. No matter the answer, it impacts opponents’ offense.) But with the Aces disjointed and some questionable shot selection, the paint has been clogged, and Wilson has struggled to get free.
The Aces’ disconnect extends to the defensive end, too. Hammon was furious about the number of uncontested layups New York got in both wins, saying after Game 2 that the Liberty put on a ‘layup clinic.’ She called them “backbreaking,” and expressed her displeasure during timeouts with a variety of four-letter words.
At the end of the regular season, Hammon was convinced that “offensively, our best games are still ahead of us.”
That has certainly not been the case against the Liberty. In contrast, the best guard on the floor in the series has been New York’s Sabrina Ionescu, who’s averaging 22.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.0 blocks.
Additionally, Vegas guard Tiffany Hayes, who made a strong push for Sixth Player of the Year during the regular season (the winner has not been announced), was practically a non-factor in Game 1, scoring two points. She averaged 9.5 during the regular season and scored in double figures 16 times.
Told after Tuesday’s loss that no team in WNBA playoff history has come back from an 0-2 deficit in a five-game series — in fact teams are 0-18 in the playoffs when that happens — Gray quipped “I love being in the history books, so we might as well try to start there.”
To do that, it’ll have to start with her, and the Aces’ other starting guards.