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Michael Voebel
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Michael Voebel
Senior Writer at ESPN
- Michael Voebel is a senior writer covering the WNBA, women’s college basketball and other college sports. Voebel began covering women’s basketball in 1984 and has been with ESPN since 1996.
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Charlie Cream
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Charlie Cream
ESPN.com
- Charlie Krim provides NCAA Women’s Tournament predictions for ESPN.com.
It was inevitable, wasn’t it?
The New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces will meet again in the WNBA playoffs. This time, it will be in the semifinals, 11 months after the Aces beat the Liberty in the WNBA Finals.
Top-seeded New York hosts fourth-seeded and two-time defending champion Las Vegas in a five-game series starting Sunday. Both teams advanced after sweeping their opponents in the first round on Tuesday.
The Aces struggled enough for parts of the regular season to finish in fourth place. But it was a great series featuring last season’s two MVPs: Las Vegas’ A’ja Wilson and New York’s Brianna Stewart.
The Aces hit a low point after losing 90-82 to New York on June 15 in Las Vegas; they were 6-6 at the time. Wilson vowed in the postgame press conference that things would get better. Despite some ups and downs, the Aces have looked like they’ve been doing just fine in recent weeks. They finished the regular season with nine wins in their last 10 games, then swept the fifth-seeded Seattle Storm 2-0 in the first round.
New York had the best regular-season record (32-8) and defeated the eighth-seeded Atlanta Dream 2-0. The Liberty also swept the regular-season series against the Aces 3-0.
Wilson and Stewart were teammates and were two of the best players on the U.S. team that won its seventh straight Olympic gold medal in Paris. Stewart, 30, and Wilson, 28, have won five MVP awards between them and have each won two WNBA titles.
Stewart won her two championships with Seattle in 2018 and 2020, and moved to New York as a free agent last season. The narrative for 2023 was that Las Vegas and New York were “super teams,” and they did just that with a 3-1 win over the Aces in the final.
Now, we’ll see which one will make it to the 2024 Finals. ESPN takes a look at the upcoming high-powered series.
Can the Aces reverse the Liberty’s dominance in their regular season meetings?
Fobel: Yes, because the Aces are playing more like the team that won the last two titles, not the team that lost 13 games in the regular season. As Las Vegas coach Becky Hammon said just before the first round when asked about taking her team’s temperature: “I think the temperature is rising.”
Hammon pointed to the Aces’ 93-90 loss to the Dallas Wings on Aug. 27 as a particularly painful loss, as Las Vegas conceded 32 points in the fourth quarter.
“I went crazy,” Hammon said of her attack on her team’s defense after the loss.
The Aces responded, and it was a turning point. They have lost only once since: 75-71 on Sept. 8 to New York, when Wilson missed the game with an ankle injury.
The Aces can look at their loss to Liberty this way: Center Chelsea Gray was still out for Game 1 (she returned on June 19) and Wilson missed Game 3. In the Aces’ 79-67 loss to Liberty on Aug. 17, center Jackie Young played but was a shadow of herself, dealing with an illness and shooting 1-of-8 from the field for 4 points.
None of this is meant to diminish the Liberty’s victories or make excuses for Las Vegas’ loss. But the Aces are a better, more complete team now than they were in any of those games.
Both teams saw several players emerge in the first round. What is the key match in this series?
Cream: In a series full of stars and exciting individual matchups, the Young-Sabrina Ionescu battle could be the one that changes the outcome. But it’s worth noting that Young hasn’t played at her best in any of New York’s three regular-season meetings. She averaged 8.7 points on 32.3 percent shooting against the Liberty (she averaged 15.8 points per game on 43 percent shooting on the season). Even with the Aces’ full roster, and with all four of their top teams active and healthy, Young should be able to do better against New York.
It won’t just be on offense. Young will likely face Ionescu on defense in the semifinals. Given Ionescu’s stellar performance in the decisive game against Atlanta — 36 points and nine assists — the Aces will need Young’s best on defense as well.
Until Tuesday, Ionescu had been struggling. In the previous three games, including the playoff opener, she had gone 9-of-35 from the field and totaled 21 points. But she turned the momentum around Tuesday.
Young was solid late in the regular season as Las Vegas managed to finish third. However, she was quiet Tuesday — 3-of-10 from the field for nine points, though she also added nine rebounds and five assists — as Wilson (24 points, 13 rebounds), Kelsey Plum (29 points, 11-of-15 from the field) and Gray (12 points, nine assists) had big nights. To beat the 2024 Liberty, Las Vegas needs all four to score.
0:50
Jackie Young Steal Ends Aces Sweep
Jackie Young puts in a stellar performance to close out the series for the Aces as they advance to the WNBA semifinals.
What can we expect from another Wilson-Stewart showdown?
Fobel: Last season, Stewart won a close three-way race for the MVP award, while Wilson finished third. But Wilson was the dominant winner of the WNBA Finals MVP award, averaging 23.8 points, 11.8 rebounds and 2.3 blocks in nine playoff games for the Aces.
Stewart wasn’t at her best in the playoffs last season. She averaged 18.4 points and 10.2 rebounds in the Liberty’s 10 playoff games, but she shot just 35.8 percent from the field and 19.6 percent from beyond the arc.
Hammon said Tuesday after the Aces’ Game 2 win over Seattle that she believes the Liberty have been playing at their best all season after the disappointment of losing the finals last year. And for Stewart in particular, this season could be especially important because, let’s face it, she left Seattle to win a state championship. She wants that badly.
Likewise, Wilson has been on fire all season long because she wants to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is the best player of the season. So you have two superstars with a lot of motivation. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot of important moving parts (most notably another Liberty player who won last season’s MVP, Jonquel Jones).
But it seems like a lot of this series may depend on who can impose their will more between Wilson and Stewart.
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