WNBA playoffs: 3 things to know for Aces-Liberty semifinals

It’s the inevitable meeting of the superteams again. Except the postseason clash that’s been expected all year will go down in the semifinals.

The No. 1 New York Liberty and No. 4 Las Vegas Aces will tip off their best-of-five WNBA semifinal series at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Sunday (3 p.m. ET, ABC). Each franchise returns the starting five from the 2023 WNBA Finals that Vegas won in four games at Barclays. And the teams’ front offices filled out stronger, deeper benches to make runs at history.

The Aces are going for a three-peat that has been done only once in WNBA history, when the Houston Comets won the league’s first four titles. The Liberty are still going for their first championship after leaving five Finals appearances empty-handed. They lost three of those to the Comets.

Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb, the 2023 Executive of the Year, added All-Stars Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot ahead of the 2023 season to build the league’s first superteam via free agency. It reached the franchise’s first Finals since 2002, but fell short in a heartbreaking Game 4 the Liberty could have taken on the final possession.

“It’s hard to win in the first year when you throw a team together,” Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said ahead of the Commissioner’s Cup the Liberty hosted on Long Island in June. “We did pretty good, but I think you see the elevation of just more time together [and] how we continue to grow. We’ve faced adversity, we’ve had players out, and we continue to build that chemistry.”

The Aces are homegrown with three consecutive No. 1 draft picks in Kelsey Plum, A’ja Wilson and Jackie Young. Plum, who called out the Liberty’s lack of chemistry as a key reason the Aces locked up the 2023 title, said this week the Liberty improved.

“New York is a lot better than they were last year. Just plain and simple,” Plum said. “They’re bigger, they shoot the ball at a better clip. If you go down the line, pound for pound individually, all of them are better basketball players.”

They’re also playing with the hurt of a Finals loss on their minds. Brondello and the team have called it a scar that will heal and make them stronger. They’ll need it to take down the powerhouse Aces.

“They’ve been the best team all year,” Aces head coach Becky Hammon said. “They played like a team pissed off, with an edge. And we’ve worked our way there. I feel like we got our edge back probably in the last three to four weeks. I don’t think we’re the same team that New York has seen [this season].”

Here are 3 things you need to know for the series:

Those regular-season results are misleading

Yes, the Liberty won the regular season series, 3-0. But none of those games is truly indicative of this rematch.

A pair of veteran point guards missed the Liberty’s 90-82 win in Las Vegas on June 15. The Aces’ Chelsea Gray was still rehabbing a foot injury she sustained in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals, and the Liberty’s Vandersloot was away for personal reasons.

Liberty wing and all-defense contender Betnijah Laney-Hamilton (right knee) missed the second game, a 79-67 Liberty win on Aug. 17 in Las Vegas. It was the Aces’ first game back from the All-Star/Olympic break, though they had the longest rest period of any team. Gray still didn’t look herself at the time, and the Aces were without six players during the break.

Newly minted MVP A’ja Wilson missed the final game two weeks ago, which was the only one held at Barclays. The Liberty won 75-71 by holding off a furious Aces comeback. Las Vegas won the fourth 20-11 to send a scare into New York for a potential postseason meeting.

Both teams are fully healthy coming into this one, and Gray looks like her clutch playoff self right on time for the Aces.

The battle of MVPs

The series floweth over with No. 1 draft picks and MVP candidates. The headliners, of course, are Wilson and Stewart after the duo led Team USA to a gold medal in Paris last month. They are two of the greatest players in the world and will go head-to-head throughout the series.

Wilson tore up the record books en route to one of the best seasons in league history. Her 26.9 points per game are a league record and she averaged a double-double with 11.9 rebounds that earned her a third MVP last week. In a dominant scoring year, her 21 and 24 points in games against New York weren’t anything special. She was extra motivated last Finals after an MVP voter listed her fourth, putting her behind Stewart and Sun forward Alyssa Thomas in the vote count.

Stewart lifted the trophy last season for the second time, but didn’t have a good postseason and it hurt the Liberty. It was the first time she competed in the playoffs not in a Seattle Storm jersey and the first time she lost in the Finals of an NCAA or WNBA postseason. Her scoring output dropped 20% in the playoffs from 23 to 18.4 points per game, and she averaged a 16.3 points against the Aces in the Finals. Most of that was a slump from 3-point range (17.6%). She’s shooting 40% from 3 since the All-Star/Olympic break, up from the 22.9% slump that continued into the early part of the season.

Sabrina Ionescu finished sixth in MVP voting this year, behind teammate Stewart in third. Her improved play has the Liberty in a better spot than last season, and she reignited from the 3-point line against Atlanta after her own post-break slump. Liberty center Jonquel Jones, the 2021 MVP while with the Sun, will be looked to for big double-double games. The Aces’ Gray, Young and Plum have all earned MVP votes, and Hammon has said the team goes as her guards go.

Defense will prove the difference

Defense set the Aces apart last season and led them to a Game 4 clincher despite Gray and center Kiah Stokes both in boots on the bench due to injury. Hammon said after the celebrations she “made up a defense” and her group “executed the crap out of it.”

That side of the ball has been more problematic for Las Vegas this year, giving New York an edge even though Hammon said she’s been confident in their defense of late. The Liberty finished third in defensive rating and twice kept the Aces at least 15 points below their 86.4 points per game season average. In the 2023 Finals, the Aces bested their 92.8 scoring average in the first two games of the WNBA Finals (99 and 104 points).

Liberty 6-foot-4 forward Leonie Fiebich, a Spanish League MVP and 2024 All-EuroLeague First Team selection, moved into the starting lineup in the first-round series against Atlanta as Vandersloot came off the bench. It puts more size (Fiebich is 6-foot-4 to Vandersloot’s 5-8) on the perimeter alongside all-defensive contender Betnijah Laney-Hamilton (6-foot) to slow the Aces’ high-scoring guard trio.