Superteams were the dominant storyline of the 2023 WNBA season. And as most predicted, the Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty met in the WNBA Finals.
But a month into the 2024 season, are the superteams still super?
The 11-2 Liberty look like it; the 6-5 Aces don’t. When they meet Saturday at Las Vegas’ Michelob Ultra Arena (3 p.m. ET, ABC), the two-time defending champion Aces will be underdogs.
Injury (Chelsea Gray) and illness (Jackie Young) have been part of the problem with the Aces, who won 103-99 on Thursday against the Phoenix Mercury to snap a three-game losing streak. It helped that Young seemed to be back to her usual self, scoring a career-high 34 points, with 8 rebounds and 4 assists.
Coach Becky Hammon said as well as this team knows itself, there have been cracks in the foundation of what it has done so well the past two seasons, particularly on defense. Hammon said these aren’t fatal flaws, but fixable ones.
“There’s a hundred reasons why things start to fall apart, but at the end of the day there’s structure that has to be followed,” Hammon said. “We’re not doing anything particularly brand new. We’re just not being solid in our base. We can’t take one step forward and two steps back.”
The Liberty hit a brief bump in…
