Last season, the Las Vegas Aces compiled the oddest, most outlier season in WNBA history.
They authored the ultimate “flip the switch” season, going from mired around .500 to hitting their nadir with a 53-point home loss to closing out the regular season with 16-straight wins before sweeping their way to the organization’s third WNBA championship.
This season, the Aces also aren’t opting for the expected.
But rather than the clear, contrasting segments of their 2025 season, 2026 has featured a scramble
of up, downs, inconsistencies and unknowns. Their last two games, the second of which occurred over a week ago on July 12, are illustrative of the Aces’ incredible inconsistency.
On a home back-to-back, they obliterated the Phoenix Mercury, 106-58, before getting dismantled by the Indiana Fever, 109-75.
Vegas finally returns to action north of the border, making their first-ever visit to Toronto to play the Tempo (8 p.m. ET, NBCSN).
These conditions seem perfect for a championship-caliber showing.
Another curiosity of this season’s Aces is the disparity between their home and road records. Conventional wisdom suggests teams are better at home. The Aces, again, defy convention. Vegas is just 7-5 in games held on the Strip. Elsewhere, they’re an outstanding 10-2.
They’ve achieved that away excellence by embodying the mantra, “Defense travels.” Of course, such a sentiment usually implies that team is solid defensively regardless of location.
The Aces, further fulfilling their anomolous status, are a much better defense on the road than at home.
For the season, the Aces rank eighth on defense overall with a 106.8 defensive rating. On the road, their defensive rating tightens up the tune of 104.0, the third-best road defense in the W. At home, they slip to the 13th-best defensive rating at 109.6.
The instinct is to attribute to such a defensive disparity to effort. The Aces are dialed in when away, whereas they appear to lack the requisite level of focus at home.
The underlying stats, however, don’t severely implicate the Aces.
Mostly, opponents are enjoying a bit more shooting luck in Vegas. When the Aces are at home, their opponents shoot better from 2-point range (52.34 percent home vs. 46.13 percent road), 3-point range (35.6 percent home vs. 34.65 percent road) and the foul line (82.21 percent home vs. 78.0 percent road).
More specifically, the stats suggest that opponents are feasting in the midrange when playing in Vegas. At home, the Aces are allowing opponents attempt a top-three number of midrange shots and covert them at a top-three percentage. On the road, Aces’ opponents are making midrange shots at a bottom-three rate.
As most basketball analysts agree that rim and 3-point attempts produce more efficient offense than midrange shots, the shot profile that Vegas is allowing at home should, in the long run, result in less efficient offense for their opponents, and improve their defensive metrics.
That two of the Aces’ biggest stinkers—their opening loss to the Mercury and their latest loss to the Fever—came at home could also be skewing the still-small sample size.
And overall, the Aces are benefitting from good fortune, as their expected record, per Basketball Reference, is 15-9, rather than their actual 17-7 record. Vegas’ per-game point differential of +4.0 is tied for fifth in the league, while their net rating of +5.0 is sixth in the league. And yet, they have a top-three record.
What does all this mean for the Aces’ matchup against the Tempo?
Will they keep killing it on the road? Will their defense, whether through good fortune, good fight or the combination of the two, ensure Marina Mabrey doesn’t put on a scoring show? Will their offense, which hasn’t been an issue anywhere and is up against an uninspiring Toronto defense, absolutely cook in Canada?
And, what should be expected of Vegas moving forward as they continue to pursue a second-straight and fourth overall title? They’re both better and worse than they appear? They’re consistently inconsistent? They can be great and frustrating all at once?
While I agree with the widely-expressed sentiment that the WNBA seems to be entering an era of parity, one that’s both a product of and being accelerated by the team-building realities of the new CBA, evermore talented rookie classes and improving (albeit still inadequate) international scouting, I also think it’s also worth considering that the league’s increased number of games could be creating “new normals” that have yet to be fully…normalized.
For much of the league’s history, seasons featured a mid-30s number of games for every team. The approximately 10 extra games involved with this second go round with a 44-game season represents a significant extension.
Last year, that Aces took full advantage of a longer schedule in a way that seems like it should be seen as an extreme outlier—not a replicable model to be cited when trying to restore hope in teams suffering through sagging seasons.
Or, maybe it wasn’t an outlier? Maybe this unsettled era of the WNBA is prone to producing ever wilder variance over the course of a 44-game season?
Overall, I’m not sure of anything. And the Aces, both last season and this season, are the biggest reason why.
Last year, I thought the dynasty was done, dusted and dead only to fully believe that the team was destined to win it all by the time the playoffs began. This year, I see the Vegas roller coaster continuing to feature more peaks than valleys, with the highest peaks again coming in the postseason.
Help me out here and share your analysis in the comments.
Are you confident about the quality of the Aces, or any team? Do you see Vegas finishing the season in the top three of the standings, believing in their highs over their lows? Or, are this team’s poor performances indicative of problems that will persist?
And, what about the Tempo? Can they find a way to tread water and stay just close enough to the top eight to make a playoff push possible, especially once Brittney Sykes returns? Or, do they lack the defensive talent demanded of playoff-caliber teams?
