The Las Vegas Aces have looked average in 2025 after winning two WNBA titles in the past three seasons. Are they still an elite team?
Las Vegas is a place where vacations start quickly, then lose steam.
The first few nights are great. But then someone has to go home early, someone develops a throbbing headache from the constant sun, and, suddenly, the entire group realizes it hasn’t eaten a vegetable in a week.
Ironically, the Las Vegas Aces’ 2025 WNBA season is a good representation of those final days of a trip to the desert city. From the outside, nothing appears drastically different. But a closer look reveals how so much has gone south for the Aces, who have watched the magic of past seasons – which was akin to a headline show at MGM Grand – backslide into something closer to a sleight of hand show off the strip. Not horrible, but no longer the main attraction.
Las Vegas has been a mainstay atop the “W” table for years; the franchise won championships in 2022 and 2023, and had a 150-54 record from 2019-24, by far the best mark in the league during that stretch. But through almost 40% of the 2025 season, the Aces are 8-8 and sit among mostly rebuilding teams in the standings.
It doesn’t take much digging to see what has gone off the rails. The Aces’ offensive rating is ninth out of 13 in the WNBA after being first or second each of the past four years.
Their defensive rating, which has been at least reliable, is also down to ninth.
The Aces’ TRACR (Team Rating Adjusted for Competition and Roster), which takes into account record and strength of schedule to determine how much better or worse a team is than league average, sits at minus-1.3, which ranks ninth.
And while there isn’t one glaring issue on the court for Las Vegas, there are multiple things that could cause you to wince. The combination of losing vital role players, a big offseason addition not fitting as snugly as the team’s plan, and the general backslide that dynasties experience with the passage of time, have all culminated in a team that has less than a 1% chance of winning it all in 2025, according to TRACR.
They Shall Not Pass
Great passing can compensate for a lack of talent, and poor passing can oppress an otherwise talented lineup. Unfortunately for the Aces, they’re squarely in the latter category. They rank 12th in the league in assists, assist rate and assist ratio.
Even during their dominant years, the Aces weren’t one of the best passing teams in the league. In 2022 and 2023, they were eighth in assist rate – and still won the WNBA Finals. But in those seasons, the Aces were buoyed by hyper-efficient scoring from their stars. Now that efficiency is harder to come by, and the ball still isn’t moving. That’s not an ideal combination.
The W’s elite teams, meanwhile, top most of the passing lists. Minnesota and New York rank No. 1 and 2 in assist rate, respectively, with Seattle, Atlanta and Phoenix right behind. This isn’t coincidence as the best teams in the league move the ball – and Las Vegas doesn’t. If anything, it’s wildly impressive the Aces have been so good without elite ball movement in years past — but that’s not going to comfort any fans in 2025.
Nothing in Reserve
No one is surprised that Las Vegas losing Tiffany Hayes has hurt its bench. Last year’s WNBA Sixth Player of the Year, who averaged 9.5 points and shot over 40% from 3-point range, signed with the expansion Golden State Valkyries last offseason. She’s helped lead the Valks’ impressive inaugural season.
But the Aces also lost Alysha Clark to the Seattle Storm, who played an underrated role off the bench during her two seasons in Las Vegas. Kate Martin, another role player, was selected by the Valkyries in their expansion draft and has had a great 2025 campaign as well. None of these losses appear that detrimental on their own, but combine them together, and suddenly the Aces’ bench lacks the punch it had in previous seasons.
The bench unit is eighth in the WNBA in net rating at -1.4, a far cry from the +1.7 (third in the league) of a year ago.
Down Jewell
We all go to Vegas hoping to find a gem, and the Aces thought they got one when the franchise acquired guard Jewell Loyd in the offseason. Loyd, who had spent her entire career with Seattle to that point, was the WNBA’s leading scorer in 2023 (and held the record for most points ever in a W season until A’ja Wilson smashed it last year). She averaged at least 15 points per game every season from 2020 through last year.
The Aces sacrificed a lot for Loyd’s services: they parted with Kelsey Plum, a key part of their championship runs and a three-time All Star, and their first-round draft pick in 2026.
That seemed like a fair enough package for a player with elite scoring pop, but like seemingly everything else for Vegas this year, the addition hasn’t gone exactly as planned. Loyd’s production has improved after a brutal start, and she’s scored in double figures the past eight games. But double-digit scoring on average efficiency isn’t what the Aces hoped to get from Loyd; it wanted – and needed, as we now see – the high-octane scoring Loyd provided in Seattle for so long.
Tough Act to Follow
When you produce perhaps the greatest season in WNBA history like Wilson did last year, there’s a lot of pressure on the encore. And the 6-foot-4 center’s follow-up to her historically dominant 2024 campaign has been good – she’s third in the league in DRIP, which projects a player’s contribution to their team, while averaging 21.6 points, 9.9 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game.
Those would be career numbers for pretty much any other player in the league, but it’s the efficiency in which the three-time WNBA MVP has suffered the biggest drop. Her effective field goal percentage of 44.8 is a considerable dip from the 53.1% and 56.5% clips of the past two seasons.
Wilson shouldn’t shoulder much of the blame for the Aces’ sluggish start, though. She’s still posting elite counting stats while being hounded in the paint pretty much every time she touches the ball.
Still, the story of the Aces this year is a bunch of small issues adding up into a collective step backward, and Wilson’s drop in productivity – even if she’s still exceptional after that drop – is one of the straws causing the proverbial camel to start having back problems.
Still Hope?
Hope is what the city of Las Vegas is built on, right? Well, there are some reasons for optimism with the Aces.
On Monday, the Aces acquired forward NaLyssa Smith from the Dallas Wings for a 2027 first-round pick. The No. 2 overall pick in the 2022 draft was averaging 6.7 points and 4.9 rebounds in her first season with the Wings, so the Aces hope she will return to her higher level of play with the Indiana Fever across three seasons (averages of nearly 13 points and eight rebounds per game).
The trade came on the heels of Sunday night’s 84-81 win at the Phoenix Mercury – their most impressive game of the season. Wilson racked up 26 points, 18 rebounds and seven assists, while rookie Aaliyah Nye had the best game of her young career, splashing five 3-pointers (including two at incredibly opportune times in the fourth quarter).
Las Vegas still has potentially the most dominant player in the league – plus another former WNBA scoring champ, one of the smartest coaches in the game in Becky Hammon, and a rookie who’s getting better as the season progresses. So, yes, there’s reason for hope. But inconsistency has been the nemesis of the Aces all season; wins that should have kicked off hot stretches have quickly been followed by head-scratching losses.
Plus, it’s not as if this team fell off a cliff in 2025 after winning a title; changes were made in the offseason because there were signs of trouble last year, which ended with Vegas being dispatched pretty easily by New York in the playoffs. A slow start in 2025 isn’t the first crack in the Aces’ armor.
There’s plenty of basketball left to play in the WNBA season. Giving up on Wilson, Hammon and the Aces through 16 games is probably not a smart move. But the problem with these Aces is that there’s not one quick fix. Getting Loyd more involved on offense would be great, but that doesn’t fix the lack of ball movement. Playing more cohesive defense would shore up a lot, but it wouldn’t make the bench any deeper.
We’ve watched the Las Vegas Aces dominate the WNBA for years. But they looked mortal last season, and so far in 2025, they don’t just look mortal, they’ve been vulnerable.
With Wilson on the team, there’s always a chance for greatness. But the Aces may have played their best hand already and are currently trying to figure out what to do with the cards they have left.
For more coverage, follow along on social media on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.
WNBA 2025: The Las Vegas Aces May Have Played Their Best Hand Already Opta Analyst.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( WNBA 2025: The Las Vegas Aces May Have Played Their Best Hand Already )
Also on site :