Aces still trying to find their groove defensively

LAS VEGAS —The Las Vegas Aces haven’t forgotten how to win. But boy, they can be a perplexing bunch at times.

The two-time WNBA champions are a far cry from being that so far in 2025. Yes, they’re a different team with new faces on the floor and on the bench. But the philosophy remains intact as Becky Hammon continues to call the shots from the sidelines.

But the Aces still know how to win, something the Dallas Wings are learning to do the hard way. Las Vegas rallied from 11 points down with just under four minutes to play and came away with an 88-84 win Friday to send the 10,428 at Michelob Ultra Arena home deliriously happy when it was looking pretty bleak for a while. Especially in the third quarter when Dallas reeled off 18 unanswered points to turn a 49-40 deficit into a 68-49 lead. Las Vegas, which committed 18 turnovers for the game, had 10 miscues in the third quarter and were down by as many as 13 (64-51) with just under three minutes left in the quarter.

“I don’t think in the time I’ve been here when we’ve had 10 turnovers in a six-minute span,” Hammon said after her team got back over .500 at 5-4.

Perhaps the rest of the league got wise to what was going on here at Michelob Ultra Arena and incorporated some of Hammon’s genius in applying it to what they do. You watch teams like New York and Minnesota and the Liberty and Lynx do a lot of things similar to what the Aces did when they ruled the W.

They pressure the ball. They get transition baskets from the turnovers they created. They battle for loose balls on the floor and on the glass.

We still see that from Las Vegas. But not often enough. Certainly not for 40 minutes. Teams have been going on extended runs at their expense this year and by the time the bleeding is stopped, the hole created is too deep top climb out of. Or if the Aces manage to recover and get even, there’s little left in the tank to finish.

“This is a new group,” Hammon said. “They’re still learning our system, our defensive schemes. But It’s a process. It doesn’t happen right away.”

We saw signs of this a year ago. The Aces allowed 82.8 points per game in 2024. Granted, Chelsea Gray, one of the team’s better defenders, was absent for a good portion of the year with an injury. But they still had A’ja Wilson, the league MVP. They still had Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum and Kiah Stokes and Alysha Clark, all capable defenders.

But Plum is in Los Angeles, Clark’s in Seattle, Natalie Nakase, Hammon’s top assistant, is the head coach at Golden State. Tyler Marsh, another assistant, is now the head coach of Chicago. And when the Aces faced Nakase’s Valkyries last week in San Francisco, the student schooled the professor as Golden State poleaxed Las Vegas, 95-68.

Going into Friday’s game vs. Dallas, the Aces were allowing 83 points a game so far this year. Yes, they’re averaging 89 points offensively, but you win with defense at every level of basketball. Right now, Las Vegas is a dead-flat average team when it comes to getting stops.

They also had to try and get stops without Wilson, who sat out the game against the Wings due to being in concussion protocol after getting hit in the face in Wednesday’s loss to the Sparks.

So how does Hammon change the narrative? How does she get her team to defend better over 40 minutes?

“When we get to stop the self-inflecting wounds, we can be a better team,” Hammon said. “I go back and forth between anger and calm. There’s only so many ‘My bads’ you can take. The effort has to be there. Nothing can happen until you make it happen.”

Chris Koclanes, the Wings’ first-year coach whose team is now just 1-11 despite having exciting rookie guard Paige Bueckers, says he sees the influence the Aces have had defensively in other WNBA teams.

“No question,” he said about the W being a copy-cat league when it comes to schemes and systems. “Teams like New York and Minnesota, they’re so well-oiled on both sides of the ball.  They’re both veteran teams so defensively, they’re very good on that side of the ball.

Whatever he gleaned from watching tape of the Aces, it seemed to work, at least for a while. After trailing 49-40 at halftime, Dallas went on an 18-0 run to begin the third quarter to lead by as many as 11 (62-51) before the Aces regrouped and got the deficit back to single-digits.

Eventually, it was defense that saved the game for Las Vegas. Jewell Loyd, who hit the game-winning shot in the waning moments with a a 3-pointer from the corner to put the Aces ahead with 28.4 seconds remaining, also drew a charge late which may have been as important as the 21 points she finished with.

“Defense is about effort and you can control effort,” Loyd said. “I’ve always prided myself on being able to defend.”

Young, who led the way with 28 points and was 11-of-11 from the free-throw line, said she’s seeing signs of the Aces finding their groove defensively.

“I think you just have to trust the process,” she said. “It’s going to come. Each game we seem to be making progress.”

It wasn’t so much a lack of defense that hurt Hammon’s team but rather an inability to take care of the ball, which she had alluded to in her pregame comments. The 18 turnovers didn’t sit well with her. But she did like the way her team battled back to ultimately prevail, especially minus its best player. And it was defense that did the job as Dallas was outscored 17-4 down the stretch. The Wings finished with 15 turnovers.

“The fight was there and that was encouraging to me,” she said. “We’re still looking for that unicorn 40 (minutes).”