Stars from both teams have been to the finals recently, but neither franchise has ever won a championship. A’ja Wilson of Las Vegas said the “vibe” is different this time.
Twenty-three years ago, Becky Hammon and Curt Miller helped lead Colorado State to the round of 16 in the N.C.A.A. Division 1 women’s basketball tournament. Miller was an assistant coach, and Hammon was one of the best players in the country. On Sunday, they’ll match up in the W.N.B.A. finals as opposing coaches, hoping to win their first titles as Hammon’s Las Vegas Aces take on Miller’s Connecticut Sun.
“I have an unbelievable personal relationship with Becky,” said Miller, who credits Hammon for his rise in coaching.
Hammon, in her first season with the Aces, and Miller, in his seventh with the Sun, go into the finals leading teams with boatloads of success in the W.N.B.A. but without any championship hardware to show for it.
The Aces have three former No. 1 draft picks on their roster (A’ja Wilson, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young) and had four players named to the All-Star team, none of whom were Chelsea Gray, who has been the Aces’ most important player this postseason. On Wednesday, Wilson was named the league’s most valuable player for the second time.
The Aces have had one of the best rosters in the league for years and finished with the best regular-season record in two of the past three seasons — and finished second in the year they didn’t finish first. But the regular-season success hasn’t translated into the postseason.
The Aces reached the championship round in 2020. Wilson has said she was mesmerized by the moment and how thrilling it felt to see the finals logo stitched onto her jersey. But she also can’t forget how it felt to be defeated by the Seattle Storm. The Aces never won a game, and the Storm won the final game of the series by 33 points.
Wilson and Young are the only Aces who played in the 2020 finals and are still with the team. (Plum and forward Dearica Hamby did not play because of injuries.) Wilson said the “vibe is different” this time, but for the top-seeded Aces to win the matchup against the third-seeded Sun, they’ll need to get out of their own way.
“We get sometimes in our own mind because we’re so talented,” Wilson said, adding: “We want to be that superhero. We want to put that cape on and just win it all and not because for selfish reasons, but because we just feel like we want to do that for our team.”
That superhero impulse has often led to isolation play, which the Aces can be great at because of their offensive skill. But it hasn’t translated to winning a championship. Throughout the playoffs, Hammon has praised her team for moving away from that style and “choosing each other.”
Wilson said, “I think that’s going to be the difference.” She added: “It’s going to take all of us locked in for 40 minutes on the defensive end more so than the offensive end to win a championship.”
An arduous semifinal series against the Storm has helped prepare the Aces for the stakes of the finals. Las Vegas won in four games, but each game came down to the final plays. The Aces found ways to respond to everything the Storm threw their way: a corner 3 from Sue Bird that gave Seattle a lead at home with under 2 seconds left in Game 3; a playoff-record-tying 42-point game from Breanna Stewart in Game 4. Somehow, the Aces came away with wins in both games, often paced by Gray and Wilson in crucial moments.
“We developed how to take a punch. Like, that can’t be understated,” Hammon said. “In the scheme of games, of series, there’s going to be these moments that are like make-or-break moments, and you got to decide in those moments where you’re going to be, and earlier we took some punches, and I saw us fall apart.”
The Aces’ finals opponent has also responded to proverbial punches to get to the championship round.
The Sun scored just 8 points in the third quarter of the decisive Game 5 of the semifinals against the Chicago Sky and entered the fourth quarter down 10 points. They responded by outsourcing the defending champions 24-5 in the final quarter to advance to their first finals since 2019. (That year, the Washington Mystics beat the Sun in five games.)
The Sun’s Jonquel Jones, Courtney Williams, Brionna Jones and Natisha Hiedeman all played in that 2019 finals series (along with guard Jasmine Thomas, who has been out with an injury since May). This time, they are leaning on the wisdom of one player who wasn’t on that team to guide them to the title that has long eluded them: DeWanna Bonner.
The Connecticut franchise has the second-most wins in league history but has never won a title.
Bonner, 35, won titles in 2009 and 2014 with the Phoenix Mercury, who she was with for a decade before joining the Sun in 2020. Because of Bonner’s championship experience, her voice is respected in the locker room, and many believe her inspiring leadership in the playoffs is why the Sun are in the finals, Hiedeman said.
“Her speeches been on point lately,” Hiedman said, adding: “We’ve been feeding off of that. She’s a champion. She knows what it takes. So she leads the way, and we follow.”
After winning Game 1 of the semifinals against the Sky, the Sun dropped two straight games, and they couldn’t slow down Candace Parker. Miller, the Sun coach, had planned a typical film session for their next practice to analyze mistakes, but Bonner told Miller she wanted to speak to the team instead of watching film. And what followed was one of the famous speeches Hiedeman mentioned.
Bonner told the team that they seemed nervous when they were playing and that despite their history — the Sky had beat the Sun six straight times coming into the series — they could win the series if they got off to better starts. In Games 4 and 5, the Sun outscored the Sky in the first quarter 54-38, winning both games to close out the series.
Miller said Bonner’s speech was “probably the best decision.” He added, “In that moment, D.B. having a heart-to-heart with our team is what they needed, and they’ve absolutely thrived off of it.”
Miller continued: “There will be a new champion in this league. There’ll be a first-time franchise champion. There’ll be a new coach. Once again, that will be a first-time champion. And you know that I’m just, I’m really, really excited about the challenge.”
Source: Basketball - nytimes.com
