LAS VEGAS — The Aces have spent the last few weeks reiterating how much has been new this season. A few players. Some key staff members. The experience of being outside the playoff bracket as late as August, forcing their way back in with a historic winning streak, and grinding through an uncharacteristically bumpy postseason run. All of that was new for Las Vegas.
But there’s still a lot around with this team that feels the same. Its core trio of A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young has remained in place, fueling wins together for half a decade now. Their joint performance gave the Aces a 91–78 victory over the Mercury to go up 2–0 in the WNBA Finals on Sunday. And they made it seem like a straightforward matter of familiarity.
“We’ve all just banked equity with each other,” Wilson said. “We’ve got an understanding of what makes people great.”
The MVP’s description felt apt. This is a unit whose investments in each other over the years have paid off. It’s a matter of them knowing their spots and tendencies. But to watch them at their best, as they were in Game 2, it feels simply like a matter of them knowing each other.
Young scored 32 points fueled by a burst in an explosive third quarter that featured a WNBA Finals record 21 points. Wilson had 28 with 14 rebounds. Gray brought 10 points, 10 assists, eight rebounds, three blocks and three steals. This roster has a bit more in the way of depth than has been the case here traditionally. (“We have the best overall bench that we’ve had since I’ve been here,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said the morning before her reserves came up big in Game 1.) But those upgrades on the margins only mean so much without steady production from their core Big Three.
JACKIE YOUNG 21 PTS IN THE 3RD QUARTER!
— ESPN (@espn) October 5, 2025
THAT'S THE MOST POINTS IN A QUARTER IN WNBA FINALS HISTORY 😱 pic.twitter.com/6essBrVjQD
The biggest numbers and flashiest highlights Sunday came from Young and Wilson. (They finished one bucket shy of becoming the first teammates with a pair of 30-point games in the WNBA Finals: “Dang,” Wilson said when the stat was read to her. “I messed up on that one, Jack. Sorry. I owe you a basket.”) Yet much of the connective tissue here came from Gray.
Which has long been the case here. There is no player in the league quite like four-time MVP Wilson, who had the highest usage rate this year in the WNBA, and few two-way guards pack as much of a punch as Young. But so much of what elevates their collective game lies with Gray. “She does so many little things,” Hammon said. Gray can initiate the offense and serve as the anchor of the defense. Of everything that came together in August and September for the Aces, perhaps nothing felt as important as Gray re-finding a form that she had been searching for since a foot injury at the end of 2023.
That was true both physically and mentally. The main clipboard on the Vegas sideline belongs to Hammon. But the second clipboard—it does not belong to Gray, she insists, but Hammon is quick to point out that no one else touches it besides the veteran point guard. Gray has the best court vision on this roster. Her coach increasingly trusts her to use that however she thinks best.
So do her teammates. Her best passes can walk the line between ambitious and risky—when she’s slinging it full-court to Wilson, or going no-look or behind-the-back to Young, both of which she did more than a few times Sunday. They know her well enough by now to make those bets pay off.
🫳 FULL COURT PASS 🫴@cgray209 🤝 @_ajawilson22 pic.twitter.com/JFs1SPia0e
— Las Vegas Aces (@LVAces) October 5, 2025
“I don’t practice catching her passes,” Wilson said. “It’s just a mental thing, and there’s the connection that we have out of the gate.”
That connection manifested in countless tiny ways in Game 2. As was the case in the opening game of this series, Las Vegas was markedly better at crafting adjustments, both in huddles and on the fly, making the game fit its needs rather than the other way around. Phoenix did not get much from its Plan A: Threes were not falling, and Alyssa Thomas getting mired in foul trouble meant struggling inside, too. It looked as if there was nowhere else to go for the Mercury.
“In the second quarter, we just kind of stood and watched,” Phoenix coach Nate Tibbetts said of where he believed the game had been lost. “You can’t do that against a team like this.”
He is not the first coach to make that kind of comment against the Aces in October. Plenty may have looked a bit different this year. But this part? It should be familiar.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as In a Season of New, Aces Rely on Familiar Faces for Game 2 WNBA Finals Win.
