Hill: Hammon’s patience pays off with Aces peaking for WNBA playoffs
Aces coach Becky Hammon made a proclamation last week that should probably strike some fear into the rest of the WNBA as the playoffs are set to begin Sunday.
“We’re not where we want to be,” the league’s unquestioned best coach said of her team that had won 13 consecutive games at the time. “We haven’t tapped out to our potential, especially offensively. We’re probably operating at 75 percent. If we can get to 90 percent, we’ll be really dangerous.”
A week later her team extended that win streak to 16 games by making a regular season WNBA-record 22 3-pointers in the season finale against the Los Angeles Sparks on nearly 50 percent shooting.
Uh-oh.
It wasn’t necessarily that the shots were falling. That can often be fools’ gold with good shots missing and bad shots falling at times.
But the excitement for Aces fans should be about the ball movement. The Aces had 35 assists in the game on 38 made field goals and looked as fluid and cohesive as they have all season on that end of the floor.
While their absolutely remarkable turnaround from a stunning 53-point drubbing against the Minnesota Lynx that dropped them to 14-14 on Aug. 2 to winners of 16 straight to close the season to put them in position to be the second seed in the playoffs and the second choice on the odds board to win it all was largely fueled by a renewed intensity and greatly improved metrics on the defensive end. It’s a flowing offense that truly can make this team a threat to win it all.
Again.
Hammon has won a pair of titles with the Aces and the franchise’s six consecutive WNBA semifinal appearances predates her time in Las Vegas. She is in charge of the league’s most consistently successful franchise. There should have been no doubt she would have them in position to be a legitimate threat to hoist another trophy this season.
But there were plenty of naysayers predicting the end of the era over the first half of the season. The whispers grew into a loud rumble after that Lynx game, the most lopsided loss by a home team in WNBA history and one of several ugly defeats to top contenders suffered by the Aces this year.
Why did you overhaul the roster? Why did you trade away Kelsey Plum, one of the key cogs in the championship runs?
The tweaks were necessary and Hammon knew what this redesigned team was capable of, it just took some time and some experimentation to get there.
Jewell Loyd moving to the bench where she could bring some firepower to the second unit. Trading for NaLyssa Smith and letting her figure out how to do some of the dirty work for A’ja Wilson, allowing her to play a more natural position and clinch yet another (likely) MVP after she had dropped to as high as 100-1 on the odds board during the season.
If Wilson is the star of the show, Smith has been the Aces’ best supporting actress. Her emergence helped make all the other moves come together.
But it took time.
“I really felt like they were this the whole time,” Hammon said of this version of the Aces after the Sparks game. “It took a little longer than I would have liked for it to develop chemistry-wise and trust-wise and ball movement-wise. But they got there. They really buckled in and started figuring out they’re better together and they’re at their best when they make the person next to them the best player on the floor. That kind of investment into each other.”
As Hammon said, now the fun part begins. The Aces are rolling and playing their best ball of the season at the right time.
Better than any other team in the league at the moment.
And they enter the postseason with the biggest threats to their title hopes on the other side of the bracket.
“It’s a special group,” Hammon said. “It’s one that had to find its way and had to find its way together.
“It’s been a heck of a journey with this group and it’s been a lot of fun. But they’re locked in right now.”
That could be bad news for the rest of the league.
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.