The Valkyries are going to win this series by making it as miserable as possible for Becky Hammon's Vegas bunch. That's what they did in Game 1, and the strategy has to stay the same. Golden State took a 71-60 victory on Sunday by holding the Aces to their lowest point total of the season while the whole thing crawled along at roughly 71.5 possessions.
That's one of the slowest games anybody played in the league all year, and it wasn't an accident. Natalie Nakase's ball club climbed to the number two seed by playing the tortoise-and-the-hare game. Put another way, they drag their opponents into the mud and sit on them for 40 minutes. That same approach must be maintained for the rest of the series.
Slow is the whole point for Golden State
Nobody plays slower than the Valkyries, and it isn't particularly close. They finished 15th out of 15 in pace this season at 74.5 possessions per 40 minutes, while the other 14 teams all fit within a 4.5-possession band. League average was 79.3. Las Vegas was 79.6, which makes the Aces dead average.
On Sunday, GS played slower than its own league-slowest baseline and pulled Vegas about eight possessions below where they live. That's a genius strategy because it's the only version of this game the Valks win.
They own the best defensive rating in the league at 100.6 and the best opponent field goal percentage at 41.4%. The Aces have the better offense by a comfortable margin, with a 114.3 offensive rating that ranks third and a 48.6% FG that ranks second.
That makes the game plan pretty clear. If you give the Aces more bites at the apple, no matter how small, they'll finish it off. They have three elite scorers with massive appetites, and they'll swallow a defense whole. You can't stop them from eating. You can only cut the meal short, and eight possessions is a lot of food to take off the table.
Vegas doesn't have the bodies for the grind
A'ja Wilson, Jackie Young, and Chelsea Gray combined for 51 of the Aces' 60 points on 17-of-50 shooting. Everyone else scored nine points total. Nine. Jewell Loyd went down with a left leg injury early in the third quarter of a rotation already missing Stephanie Talbot, Dana Evans, and NaLyssa Smith, so Coach Hammon is running out of bodies.
The conventional instinct is that a deep team should run a thin team into the ground, but running is tiring and easy at the same time. Transition offense is open looks and short possessions. What actually breaks a four-player rotation is 36 minutes of fighting through screens and contesting with three seconds on the shot clock, over and over, with nobody coming to spell you.
Golden State can pay that tax because nine players logged real minutes all season. Kaitlyn Chen's 11 off the bench wasn't a fluke; it was a Tuesday. This team grinds on opponents' patience as much as their legs, and it can throw plenty of players at this series while Vegas struggles to catch its breath.
Of course, that was only one game. The Aces won three of four meetings this year (regular season and playoffs) and hadn't shot 33.9% in any of them until Sunday, so if Wilson drops an efficient 30 today, this all reads differently. But the shape of Game 1 came from scheme, not luck, and you can repeat a scheme.
Add us as a preferred source on Google