The Las Vegas Aces just experienced the wildest 24 hours in WNBA history. And not in a good way.
On Saturday, they looked like the juggernaut everyone expected them to be, crushing the Phoenix Mercury 106-58. On Sunday, they looked like a team running on fumes, getting blown out 109-75 by the Indiana Fever. That 82-point swing from one game to the next is the largest in league history, per ESPN’s Michael Voepel and the Elias Sports Bureau.
The Fever’s 34-point win tied the biggest victory in franchise history. Indiana didn’t just beat the Aces. They embarrassed them.
“We got our butts kicked tonight,” A’ja Wilson said. “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.”
Wilson didn’t want to pretend the loss didn’t happen. She wanted her team to feel the sting.
“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 were on a back-to-back, playing two games in two days, and it showed. They were sluggish on defense, sloppy with the ball, and never really threatened Indiana. For a team with championship expectations, it was the kind of no-show you expect from a lottery team, not the defending champs.
That said, they got some good news. Dana Evans played her first game of the season after recovering from a leg injury. Her minutes were limited, but she’s another weapon for a team that already has plenty of them.
And here’s the thing about the Aces: they know who they are. They’ve been through this before. They’ve won titles. So a 48-point win followed by a 34-point loss might look like a disaster in the moment, but the roster still features Wilson, Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young, and Chelsea Gray. That core isn’t going to panic over one bad afternoon.
Las Vegas sits at 17-7, second in the WNBA standings. They’re fine. But Sunday was a reminder that even the best teams can get smoked if they don’t bring it.
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