Seattle, WA (May 17, 2021)—The Las Vegas Aces remain in Seattle this Tuesday for a 7:00 pm PT tip on ESPN2. It is the second straight game to start the season between the two 2020 WNBA Finals opponents. Seattle won the season opener, 97-83 (box score & video highlights).

(View Game Notes)

The Aces are without five-time WNBA All-Star Angel McCoughtry for the foreseeable future, as she injured her right ACL in the team’s preseason game at Los Angeles. That leaves Head Coach Bill Laimbeer with ten active players on the roster.

Although Las Vegas has been picked by many prognosticators and pundits to win the 2021 WNBA Championship, this year’s team is vastly different from the one that appeared in the 2020 Finals. A’ja Wilson is the only available player on the team who started in the Finals—McCoughtry (injury), Danielle Robinson and Kayla McBride (free agency), Carolyn Swords (retirement). No other WNBA team that reached the finals the previous season has ever returned fewer than three starters the following year.

In their stead are 2019 returner Liz Cambage, who missed the 2020 season with a medical exemption, two free agent acquisitions in Chelsea Gray and Riquna Williams, and 2019 All-Rookie Team honoree Jackie Young.

The Aces got off to a hot start in the season opener, leading 17-8 midway through the first quarter, but the Storm took a one-point lead into the second period and never trailed the rest of the way.

Wilson scored 24 points in the loss, extending her streak of consecutive double-digit scoring efforts to 31—the second longest active streak in the W. Cambage (16 points) and Kelsey Plum (11) each scored in double figures in their respective returns to the court, while Jackie Young added 12 points.

The difference in the game, as it was during the 2020 Finals series, was defense, as Las Vegas allowed the Storm to connect on 50.7 percent of their shots including 12 of 27 from three-point range. Seattle made 51.4 percent of its field goal attempts in last year’s Finals, while making 36.4 percent of its three-pointers.

The Aces counter attack to an opponent’s outside game is typically wearing out a path to the free throw line—the team has led the league in free throw attempts in each of the last two seasons. Over their past four meetings, however, the Storm have taken 12 more free throws than the Aces (99-87), including a 15-12 edge in the season opener.

Las Vegas also has yet to find an answer to the Storm’s duo of Breanna Stewart and Jewell Loyd. Stewart, who averaged 28.3 points per game in the 2020 Finals en route to Finals MVP honors, scored a game-high 28 on Saturday, Loyd, who averaged 18.3 points vs. the Aces in the 2020 postseason, added 22 in Seattle’s season-opening win.