Aces HC Voices Dissatisfaction With A’ja Wilson and Co. vs. Dream Despite 12th Consecutive Win

Sometimes basketball doesn’t whisper, it slaps you with a reality check. The Las Vegas Aces felt that sting in early August when the Minnesota Lynx stormed out of the All-Star break and nearly doubled them up in their own house. Final score: 111–58. Not just the worst home loss for Vegas soil, but the worst home loss in WNBA history. Minnesota walked away looking like the league’s valedictorian, while Las Vegas got stamped with a big, red “F”- straight from Becky Hammon herself, whose scowl that night looked carved in stone.

That stumble left them at 14-14. It made them look like a team neither good enough to chase homecourt nor bad enough to fall out of the bracket. But Hammon’s postgame message was simple: no rewinding, just move forward. “We have to move on. We have another game tomorrow, we have to get the win tomorrow.” Thankfully, the Aces did exactly that, against the Valkyries, then again, and again. Four weeks later, they’re sitting on 26 wins and riding a 12-game streak that ties a franchise record first set in 2012. It was set back when the team was the San Antonio Silver Stars and, yes, their star player was Becky Hammon.

You’d think that kind of symmetry would make her smile. Not quite. After an 81-75 win over the Dream, an interviewer asked her to evaluate her team’s defense, and Hammon didn’t sugarcoat: “I did not like our first half defense at all.” Holding an opponent to 19 in a quarter might thrill most coaches, but not one who keeps “teens” as the obvious goal. Finally, then, at halftime, she got what she wanted.

Las Vegas clamped down inside, as they slashed Atlanta’s 30 paint points in the first half to just 16 after the break. “Those little adjustments that they’re able to go out there and execute real time gives me a lot of confidence,” she said. You bet that verdict was real, as at a different moment, her star agreed. A’ja Wilson revealed the halftime cheat code in just two words: “Play better.”

She credited Brionna Jones for an early surge but knew the Aces had to choke off easy buckets: “heartbreakers,” as Wilson called them. “In the W, and the players that we play against, easy buckets are heartbreakers, because they’re so good at what they do. If you can make it difficult just a little bit, you can kind of win and go from there.” Message received. Atlanta led by two at the half, but by the end of the third quarter, they were staring up at a 13-point hole. In other words, Vegas’ defense woke up and absolutely flipped the entire game on its head, and they did it in style. Here’s how-

The post Aces HC Voices Dissatisfaction With A’ja Wilson and Co. vs. Dream Despite 12th Consecutive Win appeared first on EssentiallySports.