Can any NBA team match the Las Vegas Aces?

[penbeast0]

They just won their 2nd straight title with 2 starters injured in the finals and a third who went down earlier in the season. Anyone in the NBA ever lost that many starters and still win a ring?

[rk2023]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

[Doctor MJ]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

Debatable. They did get 3 #1 picks in a row and all of them work well together so that's basically unheard of in the NBA.

But what's interesting here is that the team that just won the title very clearly has less talent not only compared to their previous championship team, but also compared to the previous years when they failed to win the title.

What changed? Old school Bill Laimbeer left, new school Becky Hammon came in. She went small, made 3-point shooting a priority, and boom, we got the most dominant WNBA in 20 years.

I find it to be really interesting to see how trends spread in the NBA vs the WNBA. The WNBA seemed to have the 3-point shooting revolution first led by Cynthia Cooper and the Houston Comets, but after that the WNBA didn't seem to learn the lesson and in the 2010s the WNBA was considerably less pace & space than the NBA was. I honestly don't think there was any good reason for this. I think that if the NBA had had a 3-point shooting dynasty like the Comets in the '90s we'd have seen pace & space take hold a lot earlier but the WNBA seemed to be less looking to copycat other WNBA teams as copycat the NBA, and so it wasn't until after the NBA changed that the WNBA really started hiring coaches looking to make the same type of change.

[jojo4341]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

Debatable. They did get 3 #1 picks in a row and all of them work well together so that's basically unheard of in the NBA.

The Cavs almost did this. They would've still been good had they kept Wiggins instead of Love but then, they probably don't upset the Warriors with a young Wiggins in the starting lineup.

What changed? Old school Bill Laimbeer left, new school Becky Hammon came in. She went small, made 3-point shooting a priority, and boom, we got the most dominant WNBA in 20 years.

Genuinely curious because I don't really watch the WNBA, but what was Laimbeer's coaching style? Traditional post play with more focus on defense? You would think he'd be all-in on spacing given how he and the Bad Boys used to play.

[penbeast0]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

Debatable. They did get 3 #1 picks in a row and all of them work well together so that's basically unheard of in the NBA.

But what's interesting here is that the team that just won the title very clearly has less talent not only compared to their previous championship team, but also compared to the previous years when they failed to win the title.

What changed? Old school Bill Laimbeer left, new school Becky Hammon came in. She went small, made 3-point shooting a priority, and boom, we got the most dominant WNBA in 20 years.

I find it to be really interesting to see how trends spread in the NBA vs the WNBA. The WNBA seemed to have the 3-point shooting revolution first led by Cynthia Cooper and the Houston Comets, but after that the WNBA didn't seem to learn the lesson and in the 2010s the WNBA was considerably less pace & space than the NBA was. I honestly don't think there was any good reason for this. I think that if the NBA had had a 3-point shooting dynasty like the Comets in the '90s we'd have seen pace & space take hold a lot earlier but the WNBA seemed to be less looking to copycat other WNBA teams as copycat the NBA, and so it wasn't until after the NBA changed that the WNBA really started hiring coaches looking to make the same type of change.

When I watched a Laimbeer coached team I kept waiting for them to be really dirty and cheap shot prone but they weren't. Cool that a guy with his rep actually coached for a long time in the WNBA of all places (especially when, supposedly, he had to take a pay cut from working in his family's multi-million dollar business to do so).

[Doctor MJ]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

Debatable. They did get 3 #1 picks in a row and all of them work well together so that's basically unheard of in the NBA.

The Cavs almost did this. They would've still been good had they kept Wiggins instead of Love but then, they probably don't upset the Warriors with a young Wiggins in the starting lineup.

What changed? Old school Bill Laimbeer left, new school Becky Hammon came in. She went small, made 3-point shooting a priority, and boom, we got the most dominant WNBA in 20 years.

Genuinely curious because I don't really watch the WNBA, but what was Laimbeer's coaching style? Traditional post play with more focus on defense? You would think he'd be all-in on spacing given how he and the Bad Boys used to play.

Re: Cavs. True, Cavs didn’t get quite so lucky as winning the lottery 3 times in a row though.

Re: Laimbeer coaching style. Pretty much. He was always known for a defense-first mentality as a coach. I wouldn’t say it was always post volume scoring but in his final stint it was.

His big move after the 3 top picks was to acquire Liz Cambage, how might have been the heaviest player in the entire league - a Shaq-type figure.

With Laimbeer’s exit and Hammon’s entry, the got rid of Cambage, and put Kelsey Plum back in starting lineup, where she’s arguably been the most valuable guard in the entire league since.

Plum, to be clear was one of the #1 picks, but struggled early on, then had a major injury, before becoming the 6th man in Laimbeer’s scheme.

To be honest, I think it likely that Plum could have thrived as a star much earlier if she’d been allowed to play the same way she did in college - as a volume scorer - rather being asked to fit in with veterans.

Of course, if they did that and it worked, maybe they don’t get more #1 picks, and since every sees A’ja Wilson as the mega-talent of the bunch, this would have changed everything.


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[Doctor MJ]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

Debatable. They did get 3 #1 picks in a row and all of them work well together so that's basically unheard of in the NBA.

But what's interesting here is that the team that just won the title very clearly has less talent not only compared to their previous championship team, but also compared to the previous years when they failed to win the title.

What changed? Old school Bill Laimbeer left, new school Becky Hammon came in. She went small, made 3-point shooting a priority, and boom, we got the most dominant WNBA in 20 years.

I find it to be really interesting to see how trends spread in the NBA vs the WNBA. The WNBA seemed to have the 3-point shooting revolution first led by Cynthia Cooper and the Houston Comets, but after that the WNBA didn't seem to learn the lesson and in the 2010s the WNBA was considerably less pace & space than the NBA was. I honestly don't think there was any good reason for this. I think that if the NBA had had a 3-point shooting dynasty like the Comets in the '90s we'd have seen pace & space take hold a lot earlier but the WNBA seemed to be less looking to copycat other WNBA teams as copycat the NBA, and so it wasn't until after the NBA changed that the WNBA really started hiring coaches looking to make the same type of change.

When I watched a Laimbeer coached team I kept waiting for them to be really dirty and cheap shot prone but they weren't. Cool that a guy with his rep actually coached for a long time in the WNBA of all places (especially when, supposedly, he had to take a pay cut from working in his family's multi-million dollar business to do so).

Laimbeer finding his coaching niche in a league full of ultra-feminism is definitely not what I would have called.

My theory is that WNBA players just didn’t have the same diva-egos as the NBA, so when Laimbeer told them to do something, they actually did it.

By contrast modern NBA coaches need to walk a fine line to get and give respect that the abrasive Laimbeer just couldn’t do.

I knock Laimbeer as old school in his thought, but I think he really knew his Xs and Os better than most NBA coaches - particularly those who were once NBA players.


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[MyUniBroDavis]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

What do you mean by impressive?

In terms of ridiculousness I don’t think so, and I don’t think what the most unfairly stacked team of all time (warriors) did was impressive

[Colbinii]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

Nah. GSW has two Top 5 players, a player who was arguably Top 5 in 2016 (Draymond) and another Top 30-40 guy in Klay. That's the most talent ever assembled in the post shot-clock era.

[Doctor MJ]

The Aces recent run and stockpile of talent , relative to league , has got to be more impressive than the Steph/Dray/KD (in that order) Warriors no?

Nah. GSW has two Top 5 players, a player who was arguably Top 5 in 2016 (Draymond) and another Top 30-40 guy in Klay. That's the most talent ever assembled in the post shot-clock era.

So I think that one thing to keep in mind here is that the WNBA has about 1/3rd the number of teams as the NBA, which means you can definitely argue that being comparably stacked in a Top 5 sense in the WNBA isn't the same thing as what the Warriors were.

With that said, the whole 3 Top 5 players thing is something I would argue the Aces currently qualify for with their three #1 picks Wilson, Plum & Young. Further, before injury they had Chelsea Grey - who I thought definitely had a Top 5 year last year - and Candace Parker - a player who used to be on that level and who has shifted over to role player status remarkably well when healthy.

I'd also say that back in the '90s the Houston Comets quite clearly had three Top 5 players in Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes & Tina Thompson creating a massively stacked team that WNBA leadership has been quite open about being a mistake on their part. Basically, they just thought Cooper was another role player but in fact was by far the best female player in the entire world...which is one of the most interesting miscategorizations in modern basketball history, and not something I think WNBA teams ever really processes as to why exactly she was able to dominate as she did. (Hint: Pace & Space, the answer here, like it is in so many other cases.)

[Ein Sof]

I think most NBA teams would spank the Aces

[penbeast0]

I think most NBA teams would spank the Aces

Not the question.

Anyone in the NBA ever lost that many starters (3) and still win a ring?