Aces star looks to bounce back after bad shooting game against Fever

After receiving a perfectly placed pass from Aces teammate Dana Evans on a pick and roll, A’ja Wilson briefly hesitated under the basket and braced for the impact of Indiana Fever center Aliyah Boston’s defense before going up for a layup.

Wilson clenched her fists once she saw the ball fall through the net. It wasn’t her normal show of celebration after a tough basket — but relief that an easy one went in.

The Fever led by nine points with less than three minutes remaining in the first quarter of Sunday’s WNBA semifinals series opener at Michelob Ultra Arena, and Wilson had just scored her first field goal of the game after six misses.

On the same day that Wilson was named the WNBA’s MVP, making her the league’s first four-time winner, she would miss the most shots of her playoff career in an 89-73 loss.

Wilson finished with 16 points on 6-of-22 shooting, with 13 rebounds and four blocks. It would have been a solid performance for an average player, but proved to be a catastrophic one for the Aces.

“Even the greatest players have off nights where they miss. I’ll say this — she doesn’t normally lay two stinkers in a row,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said.

History says Wilson is almost incapable of repeating a poor shooting performance. Sunday was only her 30th game of shooting less than 30 percent in 314 regular-season and playoff games.

Overall, she’s averaged 49.8 percent shooting in the regular season and 50.8 percent shooting in the playoffs.

Sunday was also just the third time since the Aces began their 16-game regular-season winning streak Aug. 3 that Wilson scored 16 or less.

The last time Wilson missed more than 10 shots in the postseason was when she went 4-of-16 in Game 3 of the 2023 WNBA Finals versus the New York Liberty.

The next time she stepped onto the court, she finished with 24 points on 52 percent shooting as the Aces rallied for a victory to win the second of back-to-back titles.

That’s the kind of showing the Aces will need Tuesday in Game 2 against the Fever.

Emotions running high

After watching film with her team Monday, Wilson admitted that the fanfare of speaking to reporters with her MVP trophy pregame and needing to pose with it again on the court before tipoff forced the group out of its usual routine.

“I’m not going to make that an excuse,” Wilson said. “I just missed shots. And emotion plays a part of it.”

She added that her largest takeaway from reviewing the game was that the Aces’ defensive game plan was never executed. Those lapses allowed fellow MVP candidate Kelsey Mitchell to score 34 points for the Fever.

“We just weren’t ourselves,” Wilson said. “I don’t think it’s anything that (the Fever) did. They did their job. Came in and snatched Game 1.”

Hammon has trust in Wilson’s ability to adapt, but also didn’t express concern about the Fever’s defense.

“She’s somebody who bounces back and makes the adjustments, but it’s on the rest of us to kind of give her support on a night when it’s not going in,” Hammon said. “But I thought she had some good looks. I thought all of us had some decent looks.”

Indiana did have a plan to shut Wilson down, however.

“She’s an MVP. She’s like the best player in the world at the moment, so we just tried to make all her buckets tough,” Fever forward Brianna Turner said Sunday. “We weren’t going to stop her completely, but we wanted to make sure that every shot had a hand in her face or she was feeling contact. Just trying to make every bucket as hard as possible, not give her any easy ones.”

When asked about her level of concern surrounding the lack of production from Wilson’s teammates amid the poor shooting game, Hammon was blunt.

“I know we’re capable, but not when we play like that,” she said. “God forbid A’ja doesn’t drop 40 for us. But we had 12 assists tonight in 40 minutes, 12. And 12 turnovers.”

Evans, visibly frustrated after scoring 14 points off the bench, described how scoring opportunities could be even more open for Wilson.

“She’s getting double teamed, triple teamed. We have to take some pressure off of her,” Evans said. “Everything can’t be (isolation) for her. We’ve got to get her some catch and shoot, pick and pops, just kind of get her going.”

Contact Callie Fin at cfin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @CallieJLaw on X.