More than a ticket to the WNBA Finals is on the line tonight. The New York Liberty will face the Las Vegas Aces in Game Three, and legacies will be defined. Sabrina Ionescu, Kobe Bryant’s protege, can establish herself as the best point guard in the league by advancing to a second straight WNBA Finals. Breanna Stewart can also cement her legacy as one of the greatest closers the WNBA has ever seen by winning tonight and giving herself a chance to claim her third WNBA title. But it’s A’ja Wilson’s legacy that stands to take the biggest hit if she is eliminated tonight.
Wilson is unquestionably the best player in the league. Even though the Aces pushed through the regular season, Wilson’s dominance was impossible to ignore. Wilson had the greatest season in women’s basketball history: her third WNBA MVP award (this one unanimously), an Olympic gold medal during the WNBA Olympic break, and she smashed both the single-season WNBA points and rebounding records. And all this followed her winning her second straight championship a year ago.
Now it’s playoff time, and the Aces are laboring once again. What’s even worse, Wilson looks tired and worn down. Through the first two games of this series, she has looked far from her MVP form. In a 10-point Game 1 loss, she scored 21 points and six rebounds, a far cry from the 26.9 and 11 rebounds she averaged during the regular season. Game 2 wasn’t much better. She had 24 points and seven rebounds, which was a better game, but still not what we are accustomed to from the MVP. Now, with a win or go home Game 3 tonight, Wilson has to show up in a big way.
“It’s a series for a reason; there’s no championship won off two wins,” Aces forward Alysha Clark said. “I’ve had a lot of playoff experience where I’ve been up 2-0, down 2-0. The series is not over.”
Clark is right; the series is not over. A comeback is possible but also highly improbable, at least in the W. No team in WNBA history has ever come back from a 2-0 hole in a best-of-five playoff series. So, at worst, if the Aces want a chance to complete the historic threepeat, they would need to make history before and run off three victories, starting tonight.
But if anyone can do it, it’s A’ja Wilson. She is the most dominant player in the league, and tonight she has to remind everyone of that. Breanna Stewart dropped 34 in Game 1. In Game 2, Sabrina Ionescu dropped 24. They have a dynamic duo that will come to play. But she’s beat them before. She actually handled them pretty easily a year ago in the WNBA Finals when she beat them 3-1. They haven’t forgotten that pain and they are playing like they want revenge. So, will Wilson match that energy with an MVP performance and keep her team’s historic hopes alive? Or will she fold and let a new era in the WNBA begin?
We’ll all see tonight.
