You don’t often hear a head coach say his team wasn’t anywhere close to its own goal. But after Wednesday’s 86-76 loss to the Las Vegas Aces, that’s exactly what Nate Tibbetts admitted.
The Phoenix Mercury turned the ball over 22 times. The Aces turned those into 28 points. And Tibbetts, now 4-12 on the season, didn’t sugarcoat it.
“I think we were just careless at times, to be quite honest,” Tibbetts said after the game. “We’ll have to take a look at it. I mean, our goal is 12. I mean, we’re not even close, right? You just can’t do that. It just gets them out in transition, and it’s deflating.”
A Problem That Spread Across the Roster
The turnovers weren’t isolated to one player. Alyssa Thomas had six, but the rest of the team contributed equally to the sloppy total. Phoenix essentially handed Las Vegas extra possessions with careless passes and poor ball security—and the Aces’ defense made them pay.
Las Vegas flipped the game’s momentum in the second half, feeding off those mistakes and pushing the pace. In a game that stayed tight until the final stretch, those extra chances proved decisive.
Players Acknowledge the Self-Inflicted Damage
Guard Jovana Nogic, who finished with two turnovers, was blunt about the consequences.
“When you get turnovers, you’re not scoring the ball, and you’re giving them a chance on the fast break points,” Nogic said. “Of course, you want to minimize those or not have them at all. And the ones that we had gave them a lot of fastbreak points.”
Kahleah Copper echoed the same frustration during the postgame press conference. The theme was consistent: The Mercury are hurting themselves more than the Aces are beating them.
A Slight Silver Lining — and a Test This Weekend
Phoenix doesn’t have time to dwell. They’ll face the Seattle Storm on Saturday, a matchup that could offer the Mercury a chance to reset. Seattle isn’t the defensive juggernaut Las Vegas is, which might help reduce the turnover count—or at least let Phoenix get away with a few more mistakes.
But the deeper issue remains. This isn’t about one bad game. The Mercury are tied for the most turnovers per game in the WNBA, and their 4-12 record reflects a team that hasn’t learned to protect the ball under pressure. If they can’t clean that up against Seattle, the same questions will follow them into the second half of the season.
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