The Las Vegas Aces sent a clear message after their season-opening stumble: time to bounce back.
Few teams in sports know how to shake off a tough loss quite like this squad. Remember last season when they got stunned by a 53-point loss to the Minnesota Lynx? Instead of letting that define them, they rattled off 17 straight wins and marched to their third championship in four years. Head coach Becky Hammon and the players insist that kind of adversity shouldn't be the norm, but there's something special about a team that refuses to let one bad game spiral into another.
That championship resilience was on full display Sunday as the defending champions hit the road for the first time this season and dismantled the Los Angeles Sparks 105-78. It was exactly the kind of bounceback performance the Aces needed after a disappointing opener against the Phoenix Mercury.
"It's lovely," said guard Chelsea Gray with a grin during her postgame press conference. "Because of the loss, we have an opportunity right there in front of us. We have to flip the page super quick. Even if we had a day in between, we would still be looking at it and thinking about it before we play again. So, while I don't like back-to-backs, this one was kind of nice to flip the page and play again."
Don't let the final score fool you—this game was a battle. The Sparks clawed their way back from an early Aces lead to trail by just one point at halftime. The energy in the arena shifted, and Los Angeles had all the momentum heading into the locker room.
That's when Hammon challenged her squad to respond. And respond they did.
The Aces came out firing in the third quarter, opening with a 12-4 run that set the tone for their best offensive period of the night—33 points. That ten-minute explosion broke the game wide open and crushed any hopes of a Sparks comeback. Las Vegas locked in defensively and never looked back.
"I got on the starters pretty good from the last game, and so I wanted them to set a better tone, which they did," Hammon explained. "They came out, set a great tone in that first quarter, and the rest of the group follows that tone. In the second quarter, I thought LA really just kind of ramped up their defense. They got into some blitzes and were more disruptive. We didn't handle it well initially, but the halftime adjustment was key."