No Cap Space WBB Team Previews: Las Vegas Aces

After missing out on a threepeat, the Las Vegas Aces made moves to maximize A'ja Wilson's window and to try and contend again for a championship.

Winning three straight championships in any sport is extremely difficult and the league is not in the same place it was in the early 1990’s when the Houston Comets accomplished the feat. While the Las Vegas Aces certainly had all the talent on paper to be able to win another title last year, they came up short and lost to their rival, the New York Liberty, in the semifinal. With the pressure of being the hunted, there’s now a chance for the Aces to reinvent themselves. Dynasties can still be crowned if you manage to do something like win three championships in four years, for instance. There is still a chance for legacies to be forged.

But as the rest of the league has worked to get deeper, Vegas retooled their lineup along the fringes while making a big splash in trading Kelsey Plum for Jewell Loyd. Can a starting lineup of all-stars and the best player in the WNBA in A’ja Wilson be enough to contend with and beat some of the deeper benches in the league? That’s what we’re about to find out. But with Wilson, anything is certainly possible.

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2024 Lookback:

27-13 (2-3 Commissioner’s Cup)

Lost in playoff semifinals to New York, 3-1.

General Manager Natalie Williams not retained

2024 Leaders:

A’ja Wilson: 26.9 PPG, 11.9 RPG, 2.6 BPG

Kelsey Plum: 17.8 PPG, 4.2 APG, 2.6 RPG

Jackie Young: 15.8 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 5.3 APG

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Who Left:

Kelsey Plum (Los Angeles Sparks via trade)

Kate Martin (Golden State Valkyries via Expansion Draft)

Tiffany Hayes (Golden State Valkyries via free agency)

Sydney Colson (Indiana Fever via free agency)

Alysha Clark (Seattle Storm via free agency)

Who’s Back:

Chelsea Gray

Megan Gustafson

Tiffany Mitchell

Kiah Stokes

Jackie Young

A’ja Wilson

Kierstan Bell

Liz Kitley

Draft Picks:

Aaliyah Nye (Round 2, Pick 13)

Who’s New:

Cheyenne Parker-Tyus (Atlanta Dream via free agency)

Tiffany Mitchell (Connecticut Sun via free agency)

Crystal Bradford (Shanghai Sharks via free agency)

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2025 Strengths:

A’ja Wilson. You could start and stop everything with the reigning two time MVP and best player in the WNBA. As long as Vegas has a healthy Wilson on their team, the floor is being in the top four of the league. When everything around her is right, it’s a championship ceiling. Yes, opponents can throw the kitchen sink at her, sag off Kiah Stokes defensively, clog the paint, do whatever they have to do. But it doesn’t necessarily stop Wilson. It just slows her down. The question is going to be whether or not there’s enough firepower and cohesion on other spots of the floor to help make teams that key in on A’ja pay.

Whatever the situation was with Kelsey Plum last year, the split may have been best for both parties. I’m not quite sure what to make of the public comments on both ends ahead of this season but sometimes after a long run of success, people can just get tired of each other. That doesn’t make anyone a villain nor does it mean one side or the other was to blame for not achieving a threepeat last year. It just means it might have been time for new blood. Jewell Loyd arrives from Seattle and brings three levels of scoring, a solid defensive presence and the ability to orchestrate an offense either through scheme or freelancing. The issues around her time in Seattle last year seemed to boil down to who was the alpha in the Storm locker room. Here, it’s a pretty easy concept to grasp: this team belongs to A’ja Wilson. And Loyd, to her credit, has shown to be an extremely effective running mate to a star forward (Breanna Stewart in Seattle) who is the face of the franchise.

The top end of Vegas’ lineup can play with anybody in the league and beat most of them on most nights. Chelsea Gray returning to the year fully healthy will be a boost and the addition of Cheyenne Parker-Tyus will bring on some good depth in the frontcourt to help take some of the pressure off Wilson.

2025 Weaknesses:

In that same vein, we’re awaiting the return of Parker-Tyus. She is expected to return to the team in June after the birth of her child. While it may take a bit of time for her to get back into playing form, June to September is enough time to carve out a role in a new franchise with new faces. But the bigger question beyond the former Atlanta Dream forward is just how deep this team really is. It became apparent by the end of last season that the bench, particularly up front, was just not championship caliber. Wilson looked exhausted by the end of the year and it was clear that teams were content to let Stokes just sort of exist and put all the attention on the reigning MVP. As I said earlier, it didn’t stop her but it slowed her down. The issue for Vegas is they didn’t have enough around her, either due to health or fit or just not hitting shots, to overcome the elite of the elite late in the year.

A lot of the moves in the offseason showed that Becky Hammon, the Aces head coach and de facto general manager, understood that and made strides to fix it. Parker-Tyus was a great addition, as was Loyd. Former Virginia Tech superstar Liz Kitley is back from a knee injury and is going to be asked to play a huge role going forward. Megan Gustafson already picked up an injury and I was surprised to see Deja Kelly get waived today while Kierstan Bell, who is under a longer term contract, remains with the team. That’s no knock on Bell as a person but in a basketball sense, she hasn’t really contributed much to the Aces success beyond being a locker room presence, which is in itself a nebulous term. In a league where you only get 12 players on a roster — and where that number can dip to 10 or lower during the year for any number of reasons — you can’t afford to not have everyone contribute especially if you’re trying to win a title.

Some roster turnover definitely adds some fresh faces and new energy to a year in which the Aces will want to return to the mountaintop. Are they deep enough? That’s the enduring question.

2025 Outlook:

At the end of the day, we’re grading the Aces on one hell of a standard. But as I’ve said before with regard to Wilson specifically, these are the type of discussions reserved for GOATs and dynasties. If you want to be talked about as such and be given the due respect of being generational as a player or as a team, these are the bars you’re expected to clear. The same way that the Liberty were taken to task after losing in the 2023 Finals due to their creation of one of a super team. It’s just kind of the nature of the beast.

With that in mind, I fully expect Vegas to be right back into a place of competing for a title. Wilson getting a full offseason to recuperate after the gauntlet she went through in 2024 will probably help. Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young also won’t have an Olympic tournament to contend with. Loyd is a new add and, by all accounts, has a great relationship with the latter three superstars of this team while it feels like every free agency acquisition is a culture fit.

Becky Hammon has said that there will be no more excuses or coddling this season. Instead of dogs, she wants wolves. What I’m most curious about is how that change of framing around the Aces alters their culture and chemistry. Hammon entered the league a laid-back-yet-serious head coach with an NBA pedigree who was able to channel this team to be the best version of themselves. Whether it’s the Dearica Hamby lawsuit or the other league investigations, something seemed to change after the second title in which this overt killer instinct started to become how the Aces looked at themselves. It feels, from the outside looking in, that the players are a bit happier to open the year but is Hammon also feeling that way? They have all the talent in the world, the best player in the league and plenty of experience on what it takes. The only thing stopping the Aces is the Aces so I guess we’ll find out if they’re the own worst enemy,