{"id":233183,"date":"2025-09-17T06:36:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T06:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/233183\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T06:36:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T06:36:18","slug":"will-las-vegas-aces-win-streak-lead-to-another-wnba-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/233183\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Las Vegas Aces’ win streak lead to another WNBA title?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou guys celebrate this more than we do, I guarantee you that,\u201d A\u2019ja Wilson told reporters Sunday<\/a>, after the Aces won their 17th straight, a playoff-opening victory, 102-77, over the Seattle Storm. <\/p>\n

But they\u2019ve reached the point where the streak that got them where they are no longer helps them get where they want to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe streak stopped in the regular season,\u201d Aces coach Becky Hammon said. \u201dIt\u2019s 0-0. It\u2019s the first to nine wins. So that\u2019s how we want to approach it. I tell them all the time about just win the moment, be present in the moment. The next play doesn\u2019t care about the last play.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Aces are easily the most extreme example in WNBA history of a team getting hot at the right time. Their 16 wins to end the regular season marked the second-longest streak in league history and the longest any team has taken into the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Plenty of teams took lengthy winning streaks into the playoffs.<\/p>\n

The Charlotte Sting (2001), Phoenix Mercury (2006), and Los Angeles Sparks (2017) rode seven-game streaks into the postseason.<\/p>\n

Not many teams have taken winning streaks into the playoffs and won the title. The Houston Comets (2000), Mercury (2007), and Detroit Shock (2008) took five-game streaks into the playoffs then won the championship. <\/p>\n

Sixteen of the league\u2019s 27 champions went into the playoffs off at least two consecutive wins. The 1997 Comets, 2004 Storm, 2009 Mercury, 2015 Minnesota Lynx, and 2020 Storm are the only champions that went into the playoffs off a loss.<\/p>\n

The longest winning streak a champion has taken into the playoffs was the Washington Mystics\u2019 six-game run in 2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cI ignore it,\u201d then-coach Mike Thibault told the Washington Post. \u201cMainly because none of that matters if you don\u2019t win at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Aces haven\u2019t just been hot, they\u2019ve been almost flawless for more than a month. And for that reason, there aren\u2019t many teams like them.<\/p>\n

The closest comparisons are the 2021 Connecticut Sun, who won 14 straight games to end the season, and the 2017 New York Liberty, who ended the season with 10 straight wins.<\/p>\n

Both made the playoffs. Neither won the title.<\/p>\n

What the Aces have on their side this year that the Liberty didn\u2019t in 2017 is that the end of the streak doesn\u2019t mean the end of the season.<\/p>\n

That era of the WNBA playoffs was a more compact format, with the first two rounds decided with one-game matchups.<\/p>\n

Before the Liberty went on their run, they were 12-12 and sitting in sixth place. By the end of it, they had the third-best record in the league. But in their first playoff game, they ran into the Mystics and guard Kristi Toliver, who happened to have a historically hot hand. She drilled nine 3-pointers, dropped 32 points, the Liberty took a 82-68 loss, and a magical run ended in a blink.<\/p>\n

The Aces also don\u2019t have to wait nine days to play their first playoff game, the way the Sun did in 2021.<\/p>\n

With league MVP Jonquel Jones fueling them, the Sun won 14 straight to end the regular season and finished with the No. 1 seed, which gave them byes through the first two rounds. While they were waiting, the Chicago Sky, who backed into the playoffs at 16-16, were building momentum with wins in the first two rounds. They stunned the Sun, 3-1, in the semifinals on the way to winning the championship.<\/p>\n

After that, the league switched to four three-game series in the first round. So the Aces don\u2019t have to maintain perfection to chase their third title in four years. That doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t playing like they do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is now the time where you have to daggone be perfect,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cAnd we know that for us and the way that people play us we have to bring our A-game every single time. So we don\u2019t take any moment for granted. We understand how hard it is and what it took for us \u2014 minus this year \u2014 how hard the journey was for us to get to this point.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we know we\u2019ve got to come out and be on point. People are going to know our plays, people are going to know motions, actions, whatever. Now it\u2019s just playing perfect basketball at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julian Benbow can be reached at julian.benbow@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cYou guys celebrate this more than we do, I guarantee you that,\u201d A\u2019ja Wilson told reporters Sunday, after…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":233184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-233183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115218257278216455","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}