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Jason Williams continued to question the fellow former NBA star about his hot take. “Deeper than the bench from where? NBA?” he asked. When Beverley responded, “Yeah,” Williams doubled down on his disbelief. “No, deeper than that. 1994 DuPont High School in West Virginia [Williams' high school basketball team] would beat the WNBA All-Star team today.” Beverley insisted that “the Aces are beating y'all.” He didn't let up on Williams. “A'ja Wilson is giving Big Billy problems.” Williams then stood ten toes down to defend his point. “And what's Jay Williams doing to Wilson on the pick-and-roll?” he said back. “If she's getting 30, I'm getting 60!” Williams was so sure of his opinion that he boldly claimed, “I'm willing to bet my life.”
A new WNBA champion was crowned with the Las Vegas Aces solidifying their dynasty era, but not before commissioner Cathy Engelbert was publicly called out by one of the league’s preeminent stars, Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier. Less than a week later, Engelbert denied Collier’s characterization of their previously private conversation, specifically that Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark should be “grateful” for the opportunities the WNBA provides her. When Engelbert took the mic at the WNBA Finals to present the Aces with their third trophy in four years, her voice was drowned out by a stadium of nearly 20,000 booing. Now, owners from other leagues are weighing in on the state of negotiations between the WNBA and the players’ union. “If you think about sports, it works when the employees and stockholders are aligned,” Islanders co-owner Jon Ledecky said during the Front Office Sports Asset Class summit Thursday. “The fans are our stockholders, and the players are in essence the employees. What you’re seeing now in the WNBA spilling into the public view is no bueno. It’s not a good idea.”
The Las Vegas Aces defeated the Phoenix Mercury 97-86 in a dominant performance Friday night to win their third WNBA championship in four years and cement their status as the league's reigning dynasty. The Aces completed a four-game sweep of the Mercury in the first best-of-seven WNBA Finals in league history. Aces superstar and four-time league MVP A'ja Wilson led the way in Game 4, finishing with 31 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 blocks en route to earning Finals MVP honors. She averaged 28.5 points, 11.8 rebounds and 2 blocks in the Finals. "You have your Mount Rushmore, she's alone on Everest," Aces coach Becky Hammon said. "There's no one around."
For all the tumult off the court, the WNBA audience keeps growing in ways that would have been hard to fathom just three years ago. Friday’s Mercury-Aces WNBA Finals Game 1 averaged 1.9 million viewers on ESPN, up 62% from Lynx-Liberty last year (1.1M) and the most-watched Finals opener since the inaugural edition in 1997, a single-elimination Liberty-Comets game that averaged 2.8 million on NBC.
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The Aces’ win, which peaked with 2.5 million viewers, delivered the second-largest Finals audience overall since 2000 — behind only last year’s winner-take-all Game 5 (2.2M) — and ranks seventh all-time. Four of the top ten have come in the past two years, with Games 3 and 4 of last year’s series also making the list.
Wilson and the Aces now open the WNBA Finals on Friday against the Phoenix Mercury in Las Vegas. Despite being a regular at Wilson’s games during the NBA offseason, Adebayo will need to watch the championship series from afar with the Heat in the middle of training camp and the preseason. “A lot of stress, a lot of prayer,” Adebayo, 28, said of watching Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces push for another title. “That’s really what it is, man. But the No. 1 one thing is just praying obviously they come out unscathed and she comes out unscathed. And obviously you want to see her win. That’s the biggest thing I want in life, I want her to win. “I want her to keep being and setting a higher standard for everybody to where people think it’s impossible until it’s done. I want people, when she’s done, to be like this is the greatest women’s basketball player to ever touch a basketball. From the time she touched it to the time she left.”
Becky Hammon doesn’t think the physicality in the Indiana Fever-Las Vegas Aces WNBA playoff semifinal series would fly in any other league. And that’s coming from a coach who has multiple years of experience as an assistant in the NBA, who has assistants on her staff with even more NBA experience.
12. Las Vegas: The Aces are less than two years past winning their second of two WNBA championships, but what is clear in the intervening years is just how much Las Vegas’ orbit revolves around star forward A’ja Wilson. Las Vegas ranks No. 13 in draft capital, after trading away its first-round picks in each of the next two years, and it still doesn’t have an official general manager. If Wilson and star guard Jackie Young re-sign next offseason, the Aces would improve their championship odds over the next five years. But in a forward-looking exercise, there is too much current roster uncertainty —what if either player leaves? — for them to net out any higher. 13. Connecticut: No franchise appears to have more overall uncertainty than the Sun, as all options are on the table related to their future. Perhaps the team will be sold and relocated, or perhaps a minority sale will occur and the franchise will remain in Connecticut. A lot could happen, and the Sun’s current facility will pale in comparison to its peers in future seasons if change isn’t made. Their arena attracts an engaged crowd when they are competitive, and the Sun recently renovated their locker rooms, but their front office remains unproven and their roster could see plenty of turnover in the future.
ESPN’s broadcast of Tuesday night’s WNBA matchup between the Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty drew a big viewing audience. Madeline Kenney of the New York Post shared the numbers on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. “The numbers from last night’s nationally televised Aces-Liberty game are in: The Liberty win averaged 701K viewers, peaking at 813K on ESPN,” Kenney said. “It was the most-watched non-Indiana WNBA game on ESPN (E1) since 1999.”
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The earlier game Saturday between the defending champion Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty averaged 1.3 million viewers on ABC, so add another one million-plus game to the WNBA ledger.
Natalie Nakase knew she had the opportunity of a lifetime. After years of serving as an assistant coach — in the G League, NBA, and ultimately the WNBA — she had finally achieved a longtime dream of leading her own team. At last, the 44-year-old former UCLA point guard would be a head coach, selected to lead the WNBA’s incoming expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries. Nakase, who was previously an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Clippers (2018-2020) and Las Vegas Aces (2022-24), has no shortage of experience on the bench. Under Clippers coach Ty Lue, she earned the respect of dozens of NBA players. Under the leadership of Becky Hammon, she won two WNBA championships alongside some of the best players in the sport. To this day, she credits Hammon for helping shape the WNBA into the league it is today — and for giving her a career-altering opportunity. Still, in the wake of her hiring in Golden State, there was someone else in the coaching world Nakase was eager to get to know: Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla, who just a few months earlier had become the youngest head coach in the NBA to win a championship since Bill Russell did so in 1968 at age 34.
Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson -- a three-time WNBA MVP and two-time league champion -- is signing a six-year contract extension with Nike in one of the richest shoe deals for a women's basketball player, sources told ESPN on Tuesday. The news comes after Wilson was named to Nike's roster of signature athletes in May and announced the launch of her signature shoe, the "A'One," which will be released in spring 2025 prior to the WNBA season.
If Caitlin Clark is playing on NBA TV, chances are that the network drew its largest ever WNBA audience. Wednesday’s Aces-Fever WNBA regular season game averaged a 0.39 rating and 678,000 viewers on NBA TV, marking the largest WNBA audience ever on the network. The previous high was set earlier this month by a Fever-Wings game on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend (652K).