The Las Vegas Aces just went from running a team off the floor to getting run off it themselves. And superstar A’ja Wilson isn’t trying to pretend otherwise.
Twenty-four hours after demolishing the Mercury by 48 points, the Aces got hammered 109-75 by the Indiana Fever on Sunday. It was the kind of whiplash that makes you wonder which version of this team is real.
Wilson didn’t mince words after the game. “We got our butts kicked tonight,” she told ESPN’s Michael Voepel. “We just didn’t show up as ourselves. We are the standard in my eyes, but when you have to show up and be excellent every single night, it gets hard. It takes a lot of hard work. It takes attention to detail, and we just didn’t do that today.”
She led the Aces with 20 points and pulled down 12 rebounds, adding two assists, a steal, and two blocks. Jackie Young chipped in 15. Nobody else on Vegas hit double digits. That’s a problem for a team that expects to contend.
Wilson wasn’t exactly sharp herself. She shot 9-of-23 from the field, a rough 39 percent. So when she talks about accountability, she’s including her own night in that conversation.
What stood out most, though, was her refusal to just flush the loss and move on. Wilson wants this one to stick around a while.
“I don’t want to flush this game away at all,” she said. “I think we need to understand we can’t look like this anymore against any team. But I do feel like we need to rest a little bit.”
The Aces have that rest coming. Their next game is a road matchup against the Toronto Tempo on July 20 at Coca-Cola Coliseum. Tip-off is at 8 p.m. Eastern.
Whether they actually learn from this drubbing or just shake it off will say a lot about how the rest of their season goes.
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