Aces aim to regain ‘edge’ vs. Liberty, make history down 0-2

NEW YORK — To stop their championship three-peat quest from ending, the Las Vegas Aces know they will need to do something no WNBA team has done before: Rally from an 0-2 deficit in a best-of five series.

The two-time defending champions lost Game 2 of their semifinal series against New York 88-84 on Tuesday, meaning the rest of their games are must-win. Starting Friday in Las Vegas.

“I love being in the history books, so might as well try to start there,” Aces guard Chelsea Gray said. “That’s going to be our mentality.”

The Barclays Center crowd of 14,321 that included luminaries such as Alicia Keys, Carmelo Anthony and Gayle King celebrated the No. 1 seed Liberty’s victory that gave New York a commanding two-game lead in the series. But another spectator who got a big ovation from the crowd, former Liberty guard Teresa Weatherspoon, knows from experience there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Weatherspoon, recently fired after just one season as head coach with the Chicago Sky, is among the most revered players in Liberty history. She played for New York in four title pursuits from 1997 to 2002. The Liberty lost all of them: the first in a championship game in the league’s inaugural season and the other three in series. Then New York fell in the WNBA Finals again last year.

“Being up 2-0 is great, but we haven’t won anything,” New York guard Sabrina Ionescu said. “We did what we were supposed to, which was protect home court.”

The No. 4 seed Aces, meanwhile, didn’t do what they hoped to. Coach Becky Hammon said she tried to avoid calling timeouts during stretches of the game because she didn’t want to yell at her team in frustration. But a few times, she did.

“I’m not mad at the officials, I’m not mad at the New York Liberty,” said Hammon, who guided the Aces to two titles in her first two seasons as head coach. “I’m mad at us because of the amount of layups we’re giving up. It was a thing in the first game, a thing in the second game. And if it’s going to be a thing in the third, we’re not going to win. They’re too good.

“We were the best team last year. They’ve been the best team this year. Because of their habits, their edge that they’ve had the entire year, their incredible attention to detail. Quite frankly, we haven’t had the edge. Now, we found it the last month. But the feel was different from the jump [of this series].

“This is why three-peating is hard. The whole league has been pissed off for the last eight months — my players are in commercials and this and that. And being celebrities. And you get distracted. That’s why it’s hard. Human nature is distracting.”

Conversely, Hammon knows how hungry New York is to win the franchise’s first title. The Liberty now have won five consecutive games (including the regular season) against the Aces.

Ionescu, New York’s No. 1 pick in 2020, had 24 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists Tuesday. That followed her Game 1 performance of 21 points and 5 assists Sunday.

“We had a scheme in Game 1 that we didn’t do,” Hammon said of trying to guard Ionescu. “And tonight, I just felt like we didn’t keep her in front of us as well as we probably could have.”

One of Hammon’s other big concerns was turnovers. The Aces had 12, which isn’t that bad a total, but they all hurt. Especially the last one: With 10.1 seconds left and the Aces trailing by two, Gray’s inbounds pass bounced off teammate Kelsey Plum. It was originally called the Aces’ ball, but was overturned on review when New York challenged it.

Las Vegas was forced to foul after that, with Ionescu making two free throws and Breanna Stewart another two to seal the victory.

“The turnovers really hurt in the first half,” Gray said of the 11 that came in the opening 20 minutes. “If we change a few of those possessions, it’s a different game going into halftime and we’re not climbing out of a hole.”

The hole that the Aces now find themselves in is daunting. WNBA teams with 2-0 leads in best-of-five series are 18-0. No previous defending champion has been in an 0-2 series deficit before. Four defending champions have been swept in the past, but those were in best-of-three series.

“It starts with our mentality from the beginning,” Gray said of how the Aces can come back. “Being the aggressor on both ends of the floor. I thought there were a lot more glimpses of it tonight … the first game, we didn’t have it at all. But it’s going to take a full 40 to be able to get it done.”

And the Aces will have to do that three times in a row, or New York will head to the WNBA Finals.