Aces host gritty Storm in Game 1 with eyes on the championship

Pursuit of a third WNBA championship begins for the Las Vegas Aces on Sunday when they host the Seattle Storm in Game 1 of their best-of-three opening-round playoff series.

Closing the regular season on a 16-game winning streak, just two shy of matching the league all-time record, Las Vegas climbed to the No. 2 seed in the WNBA playoffs. Their surge on the back-half of the schedule powered the Aces from a .500 record at 14-14 on Aug. 2, when they hit their nadir in a 111-58 loss to league-leading Minnesota.

"Did (the team's play) look like the way we thought it should look like? No. But I feel like that's everything in life sometimes," said Las Vegas forward A'ja Wilson following the Aces' 103-75 rout of Los Angeles to cap the regular season on Thursday.

Wilson, the league's reigning Most Valuable Player and three-time recipient of the award, is a leading candidate to claim her fourth. She has paced Las Vegas with averages of 23.4 points, 10.2 rebounds and 2.3 blocked shots per game.

She has had plenty of support from a contingent that includes 16.5-point-per-game scorer Jackie Young; Chelsea Gray, averaging 11.2 points and 5.4 assists per game; and Jewell Loyd, a marquee offseason addition from Seattle.

Loyd spent her first 10 years in the league with the Storm, where she won Rookie of the Year in 2015 and claimed the WNBA scoring title in 2023 with 24.7 points per game.

Loyd took a more complementary scoring role this season, averaging 11.2 points per game, but knocked down 2.3 3-pointers per game -- matching the second-highest output of her career -- and contributed to the Las Vegas defense with 1.2 steals per game.

She will play a key role against her former team, which closed the regular season with a 74-73 win over the Golden State Valkyries to earn the No. 7 seed in the postseason.

The gritty victory reflected Seattle's defining trait in wins for much of its regular-season campaign, as the Storm boasted the WNBA's fourth-lowest point-per-game yield at 80.1 points per game.

In four meetings with Las Vegas, which the teams split, Seattle held the Aces to fewer than Las Vegas' 83.6-point per game average three times. The two only played once since June, however, meeting in a 90-86 Aces win on Aug. 8.

Rookie center Dominique Malonga scored 22 points off the bench in that contest for one of her nine games scoring in double-figures over the final month of the regular season. Malonga is one of seven Storm scorers averaging at least 7.7 points per game, a group that includes late-season additions Brittney Sykes (11.8) and former league MVP Nneka Ogwumike at a team-high 18.3.

Following their playoff-clinching win over Golden State, Ogwumike credited the Storm's balance for helping them win close games on the road to the postseason.

"Over time, we've been able to train that muscle," she said. "A lot of the games we played in August felt like playoff environments. I can't help but believe it will help prepare us for what we'll be able to experience in the postseason."

--Field Level Media