NEW YORK (AP) — A'ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young all missed Las Vegas' game against the New York Liberty to rest on Sunday, when the team was playing the second half of a difficult back-to-back.
The Aces lost in Minnesota on Saturday in a nationally televised game and didn't arrive at their hotel in New York until nearly 10 p.m. after making the almost 1,200-mile trek from Minneapolis.
“I mean, everybody has a brutal schedule at some point.
I don’t even think they do this in the NBA, though, where it’s less than 24 hours,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said. “You can check, but I’m pretty sure that’s not even legal on the NBA side, you’d have to look up. But I don’t recall. With the time change, it ends up being that.”
The NBA has frequent back-to-backs as well.
Las Vegas’ trip is among the worst a team could have as far as back-to-backs goes. The league won’t make teams travel two times zones or have less than 22 hours between games if it’s playing consecutive days, according to a person familiar with scheduling. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity earlier this week because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about it.
Hammon said the No. 1 priority for her and the Aces is the players' health.
“We’re going to always be on the side of health and safety for our players," she said. "I’m not going to put them in any kind of jeopardy to get hurt when we’ve been expending a lot of energy on travel and a lot of miles back and forth crisscrossing the country.”
Sunday’s game against the Liberty was on ABC and had a 12:30 p.m. EDT tipoff because the network was showing the Little League Softball World Series championship game afterward.
The early tipoff meant an early wake up and arriving at the arena less than 12 hours after the Aces got to their hotel.
Sunday's contest caps a five-game road trip for the Aces that started last Saturday in Chicago. The Aces lost that game and then went on to rout Atlanta. A stop in Indiana on Thursday ended with an overtime victory by Las Vegas thanks to buzzer-beating 3-pointers by Gray at the end of regulation and overtime.
Even without Las Vegas' top three players, Liberty coach Chris DeMarco wasn't going to take the Aces lightly.
“You can’t go in this game and think they’re not going to be like, oh, there’s 60 points missing. It’s my turn to get to work, so it’s dangerous," DeMarco said. "We’ll be ready for it.”
___
AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
