Point guard Chelsea Gray sees a slight opening to the basket, but continuing with her drive would likely result in a contested layup. Instead, she passes out to center Iliana Rupert beyond the three-point line. The ball never touches the ground, and barely settles in Rupert’s hands, before she fires off the next pass to shooting guard Kelsey Plum in the corner along the baseline.

Plum exploits a mismatch, blowing past a defender for an easy layup to give the Aces a fourth-quarter lead in a recent game against the Atlanta Dream. That textbook example of coach Becky Hammon’s pace-and-space offensive style helps the Aces pull away from the Dream for a 97-90 victory on an otherwise sluggish night.

Even when Las Vegas’ WNBA team isn’t playing its best, every Aces’ game is chock full of plays like that. It’s what Hammon has brought to town in her first season at the helm after nine as an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs under legendary NBA coach Gregg Popovich.

The 2022 Aces, much like the Spurs for more than a decade, play a beautiful brand of basketball.

“I had a very good teacher,” Hammon humbly deflects during a phone interview with the Weekly. “[And] I just think it’s more enjoyable to watch.”

The Aces have definitely been a joy to witness this season, much more so than in their first four years in Las Vegas. Though they experienced success under then-coach Bill Laimbeer, reaching at least the conference finals in each of the past three seasons, the action wasn’t as aesthetically satisfying.

Laimbeer stuck to his play-through-the-post roots, despite evidence that the Aces had outgrown the approach and had more than enough talent to expand their attack. Hammon is careful not to “Monday morning quarterback” any other coach, but she admits she came in wanting to do things differently after reviewing film from last season.

“What I really wanted to do was give them some structure,” Hammon says. “But I also wanted them to be free to play to their strengths, feel free to make reads and play with each other.”

The systematic changes sounded promising on paper, but implementing them remained a risk, especially considering the condensed, 18-day durations of WNBA preseason training camps. Hammon openly wondered whether she would have enough time to install everything she wanted before the regular season began.

Considering her perfectionist nature, she probably didn’t end up getting to everything, but it appears to have worked out anyway. The Aces won nine of their first 10 games to open the season, demonstrating that they wouldn’t be falling from their established spot at the top of the league.

Now sitting with the first overall seed going into the eight-team playoffs, it’s safe to say that Hammon’s scheme has sunk in swimmingly with the Aces.

“She lets us do us,” star forward A’ja Wilson says. “She doesn’t try to be a puppet master. She’s like, ‘If this is what you see and this is what you do, do it.’ She just gives us the foundation but lets us work within it.”

Hammon knew she had a generational talent in Wilson, the WNBA’s 2020 MVP, so going into training camp, the coach prioritized scheming to maximize her usage. That began with empowering Wilson to play more freely and take more shots—something the star player immediately embraced.

In her first four seasons in the WNBA, Wilson took a total of two three-point shots. Under Hammon this year, she has attempted 85—and made a highly respectable 41 of them.

Only two teammates have posted a higher mark than Wilson’s 37.3% three-point percentage. Guard Jackie Young sits third in the league at 43.1% while Plum is fourth at 42%.

Plum threatened for the WNBA scoring title this regular season before finishing second in the league at 20.2 points per game. Like Wilson, Plum has expanded her game under Hammon, going from the league’s Sixth Woman of the Year winner off the bench last season to an MVP candidate this year.

In the first possession of the win over the Dream, Plum and Wilson ran a pick-and-pop beyond the arc that ended with the latter swishing a 3-point shot. It was another picturesque play, the type the WNBA hasn’t always been known for producing.

Perhaps unfairly, many have knocked the league for being a step behind the level of play in the NBA, especially after the Spurs helped modernize the game through nonstop passing and, in Hammon’s words, “always making the right play.” The Aces might have helped perpetuate that negative WNBA stereotype in previous years, but now, they’re disproving it.

It’s impossible to watch this year’s Aces as a basketball fan and not be impressed by their style. It’s thrilling, and it just might deliver them to a championship.

“I don’t think you’re ever satisfied,” Hammon says. “There are always things you can improve on, things you can do better. But I do think our girls are learning their spots a little … in the sense that they know where their shots are going to come. They’re figuring it out.”

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