PHOENIX – A’ja Wilson caught the ball on an inside pass with five seconds left in regulation and the game was tied. She quickly scanned her surroundings, took a dribble and, as DeWanna Bonner and Alyssa Thomas sent a double team, performed a quick turnover and threw the ball.
The shot went in halfway before bouncing slightly out of the net. But he came back, sealing the Las Vegas Aces’ 90-88 victory over the Phoenix Mercury on Wednesday night and giving them a 3-0 lead in the WNBA finals.
Now, the Aces are just one win away from their third title in four years.
“I mean, under Becky (Hammon), we never won a third game. That was a must-win for us,” Wilson said. “Just for that. I feel like my biggest mentality and what I’ve passed on to my teammates is we just need to win one… win the possessions, win the quarters, and then everything else will happen.”
Wilson’s game-clinching play — the ninth game-winning basket in the final five seconds of a Finals game in WNBA history — was exactly as Hammon had prepared it. Type of.
“Get the ball to A’ja and get out of the way,” Hammon joked.
Wilson knows moments like this add to his legacy. And in the same breath, she acknowledged that right now, succeeding on this stage is exactly what her team expects of her.
“I appreciate that Becky trusts me in those moments,” Wilson said. “But those are just playoff basketball moments. Those are the moments you live for. … I’m glad I was able to come to work.”
She continued: “It’s the finale. … These are the moments you see on TV. You watch on TV and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, being in this building,’ and it’s really powerful.”
Wilson finished with 34 points on 11-of-20 shooting and 14 rebounds. It was her fifth career 30-point double-double in the playoffs, and only the third time a player had a 30-point double-double in the Finals (Breanna Stewart in 2021 and 2024 and Jonquel Jones in 2019).
In true Wilson form, she made sure her impact was felt on both ends of the court. She hit 59 percent on contested shots and held the Mercury to 18 percent when she contested a shot, according to ESPN Insights.
His game was not without errors, however. With 40 seconds left and the score tied at 88, Wilson couldn’t pass to him on a backdoor cut and turned the ball over.
At that point, Wilson knew she had to somehow get the ball back and compensate for what could have been a costly turnover.
“It might not necessarily be on me to get it, but I knew it was going to be on the defensive end or something, I just knew I had to get something back because it would have crushed my whole soul. … When I saw the next play was for me, I was like, ‘Trust me.'”
“We all had 100 percent confidence in A’ja,” Jewell Loyd said. “Everyone on that bench was like, ‘We’re winning this game.'”
The Aces controlled the game for the first 30 minutes, taking a 17-point lead heading into the fourth quarter. Ultimately, Hammon didn’t need to burn a timeout in the first quarter to get his team off to a slow start.
Las Vegas implemented the desired rhythm, shut down the Mercury on offense and methodically withstood any sort of response from Phoenix.
But in the fourth quarter, the Mercury played with a new level of energy. In the semifinals, Phoenix overcame deficits of 20 and 14 points against the Minnesota Lynx to win two games. And the Mercury looked poised for another comeback against the Aces in Game 3.
“We threw a punch and they backed away,” Hammon said. “I think to some extent, of course, I want the game to go perfectly, but you have to give them credit for warming up and giving themselves a chance to win at the end. … They’re a desperate team — they had to win that one … we were able to weather that storm.”
Hammon was right: the Mercury were as close as possible to a must-win scenario without being on the verge of elimination.
In the first best-of-seven final in WNBA history, the Aces must win one more game to be crowned champions. The Mercury must win four in a row.
“We had a lot of opportunities to get the win,” Thomas said. “At some point you have to take it upon yourself.”
The last time there was a sweep in the WNBA Finals was in 2020, when the Aces lost in three games to the Seattle Storm.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts said. “We have a tough road ahead, but we have to take it one game at a time.”
