Las Vegas Aces are on a historic high with WNBA playoffs underway

The Las Vegas Aces ended the 2025 WNBA regular season in the same fashion they’ve spent the last month—by smashing records.

The Aces’ 103-75 victory over the Sparks on September 12 gave them a 16th straight win, the most of all time to close a WNBA season. Las Vegas connected on a WNBA record 23 three-pointers in the game, and combined for 35 assists, the second-most of all-time in the league.

Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young became only the third pair of teammates to ever both have 10 or more assists in a single game. Oh, and surging Most Valuable Player frontrunner A’ja Wilson had 23 points, 19 rebounds, four assists, four blocks and two steals—a stat line never before reached in the WNBA.

“If anything, it just reminds me of how we practice,” Wilson said, shrugging off the historic performance. “I think sometimes our practices look like this, when we’re just clicking on all cylinders and we’re feeling good. It feels great to see it in games and see it working for us.”

Las Vegas has enjoyed all the accolades and benchmarks that have come along with turning its season around but has tried not to put too much into them.

Maybe that’s partly because chasing history was so openly front and center for last year’s team that ultimately fell short.

The Aces were looking to become the first team since the 1997-2000 Houston Comets, when the WNBA was formed, to win three consecutive titles. They didn’t get there, falling in the playoff semifinals to the New York Liberty. But they’ve got a chance to rectify the disappointment with this year’s postseason.

No team since the Comets has won three titles in four years either, and the Aces have now put themselves in prime position to pull it off. They were at risk of dropping out of the eight-team bracket after a humiliating 111-58 defeat to the Minnesota Lynx on August 2 but haven’t lost since to capture the No. 2 seed.

They face the No. 7 seed Seattle Storm in the first round and then would meet either the No. 3 seed Atlanta Dream or No. 6 seed Indiana Fever with a victory. The Aces beat Seattle 102-77 in Game 1 on September 14; as of press time, Game 2 of the first-round, best-of-three series was set for September 16 in Seattle.

“I think this is going to be one of the best playoffs we’ll see in the W because everyone is just playing really well at the right time,” Wilson said. “But we’ve got to buckle in on our matchups and assignments. We’ll go back and look at past games and see what worked and what didn’t and then go out there and just play the Aces basketball that we’ve been playing and let the ball find who needs to be shooting it at the right time and the right place.”

Wilson is cautioning that the playoffs might not be easy, but the Aces did catch a break with the draw. The two favorites for most of the year, the No. 1 seed Lynx and the defending champion/No. 5 seed New York Liberty, are both on the top half.

Las Vegas earned its way to the bottom half with the No. 2 seed, meaning it wouldn’t have to play Minnesota or New York until the WNBA Finals, if it advances that far.

Last year, the Liberty was the only team rated ahead of the Aces by the betting market, but a mediocre regular season led to a semifinal collision where the former won the best-of-five series in four games.

New York hasn’t been as statistically dominant this season, but it’s dealt with a nonstop run of injuries. The Liberty is just now fully healthy again going into the playoffs.

But the Aces emerged to become the team everyone else wanted to avoid given their scorching form.

“I really felt like they were this the whole time and it just took a little longer than I’d like it for it to develop chemistry-wise and trust-wise and ball movement-wise,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said. “But they got there. They really buckled in and started figuring out that they’re better together. They’re at their best when they make the person next to them the best player on the floor.”

Hammon deserves more of the credit than she’s giving herself, too. She revived the Aces’ offense by shifting star guard/offseason acquisition Jewell Loyd to the bench.

Loyd has taken off in the sixth-woman role, playing more naturally when she gets some of her own minutes rather than trying to force a clunky fit as Wilson’s near-permanent sidekick.

The front office also struck gold. Las Vegas traded a first-round pick midseason for former Dallas Wing NaLyssa Smith, who slotted into the starting lineup seamlessly. And Wilson has raved about the offseason acquisition of veteran forward Cheyenne Parker-Tyus, who made her Aces debut in the penultimate game of the season just two months after giving birth.

The history they sought last year might not have come to fruition, but the Aces are making their own in a different way this season. Everything is in place for it to continue.

“It’s special. This is a special group,” Hammon said. “It’s a group that had to find its way and had to find its way together. The story, it’s been a heck of a journey.”

This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.