With the WNBA playoffs on the horizon, the defending champion Las Vegas Aces have once again gotten hot at the right time and have a chance to match their season-high win streak with a sixth straight victory on Tuesday when they host the already-eliminated Los Angeles Sparks.
The Aces (29-13) are coming off back-to-back wins in a home-and-home set against Seattle, the first of which was a 114-77 thrashing in Seattle, highlighted by Jackie Young’s career-high 35 points. A’ja Wilson led the way for Las Vegas in the encore on Sunday, tallying a game-high 30 points and eight rebounds to lead the Aces to a 98-77 win.
Wilson is again the overwhelming frontrunner to win a record fifth WNBA MVP award. Wilson has been held under 20 points just twice since the start of August, and in late July she had a stretch of three consecutive games in which she scored 25+ points on at least 70 percent shooting.
On Sunday, she became the first player in league history to surpass the 1,000-point mark in two different seasons. Unlike the first time she achieved the feat, there was no stopping the game for a curtain call. It was essentially business as usual.
“I mean, she just kind of shot her free throw as nothing happened,” Hammon said. “Where last time, they stopped the game and there’s a big to-do about it. It is still a big deal. You don’t want to just skip over it. She’s just been incredibly efficient. Man, really, especially the last four years, incredibly efficient. And she’s missed a few games each of those years. So, doing it and not playing the full 44 games is also pretty impressive.”
The Los Angeles Sparks (16-26) are coming off a 105-84 home win over the Portland Fire in an environment that was reminiscent of the franchise’s prime in the early 2000s. In fairness, that was because the statue of franchise legend Lisa Leslie’s was unveiled at Star Plaza before the game. Leslie became the first Sparks player honored with a statue in the plaza, and her former team fittingly honored the occasion with their most dominant win of the season with two games remaining.
With any chance of making the playoffs having disappeared weeks ago, the Sparks are just trying to send franchise legend Nneka Ogwumike off into retirement on a high note. With three wins in its last four games, Los Angeles is still playing with a spark that its franchise legends, including Ogwumike, can be proud of.
“I think because people ask me about (legacy), especially since my announcement, I do reflect on it a bit,” Ogwumike said. “But I think the more I get asked about it, the more I think that I can’t necessarily determine what that is. In the same way where we experienced Lisa, we can come out and say, ‘This is Lisa’s legacy’, but her legacy was all of us. All of us here, everybody that was celebrating her.
“To me, that’s what legacy is. That type of through-line, that type of bloodline, really, that withstands the test of time. And so, maybe in another 15 years, we’ll know what that is for me.”
–Field Level Media
