The Las Vegas Aces won the 2025 WNBA Championship after battling it out against the Indiana Fever and the Phoenix Mercury. And while the final games against the Mercury posed a challenge to Las Vegas, the team was forced to fight harder against the Indiana Fever, a reality that coach Becky Hammon acknowledged while speaking to Candace Parker and Aliyah Boston.
In an interview released on Parker and Boston's "Post Moves" podcast on November 12, Hammon made a big admission: "Indiana, actually, was probably the hardest series I've been through." Hammon, who has led the Aces to three championship wins, didn't say the series with the Fever was the hardest just this season — she said it was the hardest she's been through, period.
While addressing Boston, Hammon also admitted she was mad after Game 5 of the Fever/Aces games, though she acknowledged that Boston was probably more upset. "But we're going to the Finals, and I went back and watched [the game]," she said.
"Indiana played their asses off," Hammon added. "You guys played amazing. [You] can't be mad at either team — it was just two teams, blow for blow, back and forth, and both teams really played at an elite level."
"I don't care what the names on the jerseys are," she also said. "Those were two teams just going at it in the best way possible. I thought [it was] super competitive down to the wire, obviously, in most of those games. And so this one, this one hit different for sure though because it was different."
The Aces ultimately put a stop to the Fever's own championship dreams with a 107-98 win over the team, though, as Hammon noted, that win was a tough one and Las Vegas had to fight for it every step of the way. The Fever went into the finals without Caitlin Clark, Aari McDonald, Sophie Cunningham, Sydney Colson, and Chloe Bibby and lost Kelsey Mitchell, who was truly an anchor for the team throughout the 2025 season, toward the end of the match. But instead of falling apart, the Fever rallied, and insistently pushed Las Vegas until the end of the game.
The game also pit former South Carolina Gamecocks A'ja Wilson and Boston against one another. Both played for Dawn Staley at the University of South Carolina, though at different times: Wilson from 2014-2018, and Boston from 2019-2023. Wilson was drafted as the No. 1 overall pick by the Aces in the 2018 WNBA Draft, and Boston as the No. 1 overall pick in 2023.