The Las Vegas Aces nearly pulled off a big comeback in Game 2 of their semifinal series with the New York Liberty on Tuesday night, but ended up losing a thriller, 88-84. Now, the back-to-back champions are down 2-0 and on the brink of elimination.
Early in the game, Aces coach Becky Hammon was outwardly upset with her team's lack of effort, particularly on the defensive end. At one point in the second quarter she called two timeouts in less than a minute, and a video from the arena appeared to show her berating Kelsey Plum.
After the loss, Hammon reflected on the challenges of completing a three-peat and called her players out for losing their edge and "being fricking celebrities." She also compared this season's rematch between the Liberty and Aces to the 2014 NBA Finals, when the San Antonio Spurs got revenge on the Miami Heat.
Here's Hammon:
"Quite frankly, we haven't had the edge. All year. Now we found it, the last month I feel we've gained a lot of ground, but the feel was different from the jump. And this is why three-peating is hard. Let's be real. The whole league has been pissed off for the last eight months and my players are in commercials and this and that and being fricking celebrities and you get distracted. That's why it's hard. Because human nature is distracting.
"Conversely, you think about the [NBA's San Antonio] Spurs. I do all the time, you know the Spurs with the Miami Heat. They lose an absolute heartbreaker off a basic thing, offensive rebound, kick-out 3. They should have walked away with the title that year. The next year they came back, they came back with so much drive, so much discipline, so much focus that there was no way someone was beating them in 2014. That ball was popping. They took a huge loss. The Liberty took a huge loss last year. I liken it to that a little bit. They had it, they felt like they had it, and we walked away with it. I did think we were the better team, but we were dealt a really fricking tough hand last year in the Finals losing Chelsea [Gray] and Kiah [Stokes]. I'm sure they feel like something was stolen a little bit. At the end of the day, in two years we've won here one time -- Game 4 -- other than that they've kicked our ass."
The Aces are a supremely talented team led by this season's MVP, A'ja Wilson, and they cannot be counted out. However, it's worth noting that since the WNBA introduced best-of-five series in 2005, no team has ever come back from a 2-0 deficit. In order to get back to the Finals and have a chance at a three peat, the Aces would need to add another layer of history.
The first step will be playing better defense in Game 3, which tips off at 9:30 p.m. ET on Friday. In Games 1 and 2, the Liberty shot 49.6% from the field, got to the line for 39 free throws and outscored the Aces 86-62 in the paint.
"I can't call enough timeouts," Hammon said. "Nor do I want to call timeouts because I'm livid with my own team for layups."
