New FSM Feature: Las Vegas Aces - Break Up to Make Up

New FSM Feature: Las Vegas Aces: Break Up to Make Up

Franchise Sports Media

After the Las Vegas Aces’ first major press conference of the new year, FSM’s TQ explains why all is not lost with the recent changes made by the two-time WNBA Champions

New FSM Feature:  Are the 2023 Aces the Best Team in WNBA History?

Kinda feels like the Beatles just broke up, right?

Professional sports may be relatively new to the city of Las Vegas, but we love our teams like they’ve been here forever. This patch of desert was founded on a goal, a dream, and a plan to WIN. Wherever you travel from, when you land at Harry Reid, winning is a more substantial possibility in your imagination than anywhere else in the world. The Raiders are the Raiders. The Silver and black, however long it’s been since they’ve experienced it, is not new to this. They have receipts that go back over 60 years. The Golden Knights and Aces have three championship trophies between them with the word Las Vegas etched into the metal.

Winning is infectious. When you attend a VGK or Aces game, the overwhelming majority of the crowd there has the same thought process as that visitor landing at Harry Reid. The expectation is a WIN.

FSM has covered the Las Vegas Aces since 2019. Back in the days of Bill Laimbeer and Liz Cambage, if I dropped my lens cap on the baseline, you could hear it echo in the rafters of Michelob Ultra Arena. There was nobody there. This company, made up of primarily talented and dedicated women, has always put a focus on women’s sports. If we hadn’t, my business partner and most of my staff would’ve probably jumped me by now. Aside from that, I’ve had a Love for The W since Lisa Leslie was drafted to my hometown LA Sparks.

But there was something different about Becky Hammon’s back-to-back championship run.

Make no mistake, from 2021 through last season, the Las Vegas Aces were my favorite team to cover. Aside from the highest level of women’s basketball that I’ve ever experienced live, the collection of personalities, chemistry, and just overall great people was a testament to the coach and front office who put this band of characters together. They were just as entertaining off the court as they were on it. They had a way of keeping the shenanigans going while working extremely hard at becoming one of the best teams in history.

To witness the best player in the world go from completely dominating opps to completely cutting a fool was a dynamic that I looked forward to every time I went to work at Michelob Ultra. But having characters like Sydney Colson, Kelsey, Plum, and Alysha Clark in your locker room, how could you not cut a fool? Couple those personalities with veteran leadership, championship pedigree, and some damn good guard play; for two seasons, this team was just about perfect. After the loss to the New York Liberty that ended Las Vegas’ quest for a 3-peat, head coach Becky Hammon had this to say:

“We’re going to have to get together and figure it out. Obviously, we have to get better. We have to really take a sharp look at ourselves. Look ourselves in the mirror (and) see our shortcomings, and then you gotta make the moves necessary. Whatever that means.  It’s not going to be the same group probably next year, it just won’t. And I’m sad about that because I really like that group. They’re a pain in my ass but I was a pain in their ass too. I like that group. I love that group.”

Pro sports is a business. A head coach as accomplished and tuned in as Hammon is could see a change coming before the rest of us. Those changes have been hard to accept for a lot of Aces fans and easy clickbait fodder by the media and Aces haters around the WNBA. As a media person and a basketball fan, I’d be lying if I said that something wasn’t missing last season. There’s all kinds of speculation about what that was, but the bottom line is the Aces did not win a championship. Yesterday, in their first major press conference, their coach reiterated that this team, this organization is here to win championships. Point blank.

Thangs done changed. Enter the Gold Mamba.

What you know ’bout Jewel Lloyd? You better ask somebody. Put your mantel and mine together, and there still wouldn’t be enough space to hold all the hardware that this two-time WNBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist has accumulated over her basketball playing career. “It’s been a breath of fresh air.” says head coach Becky Hammon when asked about the addition of Lloyd to the roster. “The humility and the gratefulness have been eye-opening for me. Somebody who’s so accomplished and so successful and has been winning at the highest level, that’s something that really jumps off the page with you [Jewel].”

In 2023, Lloyd led the WNBA in scoring, averaging 24.7 points per game. She is a career 34.8% three-point shooter and a perfect addition to the core four of A’ja, Wilson, Chelsea, Gray, Jackie, Young, and Kiah Stokes, who the organization expects to make a giant leap this season. Opposing teams will have to adjust their defensive game plans to deal with three of the best that ever did it on the same squad.

“I’m super thrilled. This is such a blessing and an honor to be a part of the aces.” said Lloyd.  “I didn’t think it would actually happen but it did. It’s not on my timing. It’s on the man upstairs’ timing.. I think it starts with people. The first thing I noticed from the coaching staff was the word service… that’s a word that we use in my family a lot… How do we serve others.” This is evidence of the humility coach Hammon spoke about in the press conference.

In case we forgot, The Aces drafted the ACC’s all-time leader in points and rebounds in the 2024 draft.

6’6 Center Elizabeth Kitley tore her ACL and missed the final four games of Virginia Tech’s 2023-2024 season. Before her injury, she had amassed 5706 points and 1506 rebounds. At the same time, she connected on 55.2% of her field goal attempts and averaged 18 points and 11 rebounds in 151 games for the Hokies. She scored 20 or more points 60 times and grabbed 10 or more boards 81 times. In her five years in the conference, she was the ACC Player of the Year three times.

“Kitley is about as close as we can get to a number one through five pick,” was Becky Hammon’s assessment of the rookie center after a year of rehabbing her knee with the Aces’ medical staff. Kitley will be a force in the middle, and Hammon sees her as a big part of this Aces team moving forward.

“I feel like I’ve been lucky to observe the right kind of people with A’ja, Chelsea, and Jackie. You can go right down the list. Just incredible people to look up to, again, that’s just a rare experience and I’m incredibly lucky to have had that. I think it’ll help with the transition a lot better,” said Elizabeth Kitley about her experience so far in Las Vegas.

You never know what comes with change, and the break up of the best team in Las Vegas has definitely been met with some trepidation. But the Las Vegas Aces could not have come from where they were when we started covering them to back-to-back champions and one of the best destinations in the WNBA without people who knew what they were doing. While they’ve lost players that we’ve grown to know and love, the team has a future Hall of Famer and a 6’6″ prospect at the center position who’s one of the best to ever lace ’em up in the ACC.

And trust me, this team isn’t finished yet. They may have broken up the Beatles, but if they end up with The Rolling Stones, I think the city of Las Vegas will be happy to continue selling out concerts at Michelob Ultra Arena.

-TQ
President & Editor-In-Chief
Franchise Sports Media

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