The Juice Wasn't There. Aces fall against Fever 109-75.
Becky Hammon didn't sugarcoat it after the game. She didn't talk about adjustments or silver linings or what the film is going to show on Monday morning. She just said it.
"I thought we were lousy from the jump. A lot of it is effort and maybe we just didn't have the juice today the juice necessary to defend a team like that, because out of the gate it was pretty ugly."
Lousy from the jump. No juice. Pretty ugly.
That's your head coach. That's the most honest assessment you'll hear from anybody after a 34-point loss at home. And she was right this was the Aces' worst performance of the season and there's no way to dress it up.
The Indiana Fever came into Michelob Ultra Arena on Sunday evening and handled the Las Vegas Aces 109-75. Third game in four days. Second half shooting of 27.8 percent. Indiana hit 15 threes. Kelsey Mitchell went for 27. Six Fever players in double figures. The Aces were outmatched, outworked, and out of gas.
The third quarter is where this game was lost
Coming out of halftime trailing 59-48, the Aces had every reason to believe they could make this a game. They came out firing scored the first 7 points out of the locker room, cut it to 4 points with 3:30 left in the third, and for one brief moment it felt like the crowd was going to get back into this.
Then Indiana went on a 14-2 run. Three threes. One turnover. Four consecutive Aces misses. In a span of three and a half minutes the Fever went from 4 points ahead to 16 and the game was effectively over.
The Aces shot 28.6 percent in the third quarter. That's not a cold stretch. That's a team that ran out of legs on the third night of a brutal back-to-back-to-back stretch, against a Fever team that was rested, ready, and fully locked in.
A'ja Wilson kept fighting even when nobody else could
On a night when this team had nothing, A'ja Wilson had 20 points and 12 rebounds her 132nd career double-double, fifth most in WNBA history, and her 102nd twenty-point double-double, second most behind Tina Charles. She also passed Lisa Leslie to move into No. 14 on the all-time WNBA scoring list with 6,281 career points. Sylvia Fowles is next at 6,415.
She has now scored in double figures in 46 consecutive games the longest active streak in the league. She was the one Ace who competed with the right energy from start to finish, and even she couldn't carry a team that simply didn't have enough left in the tank after three games in four days.
Dana Evans made her return
In the middle of a rough night there was one genuinely feel-good moment. Dana Evans returned to the floor for the first time since Game 4 of the 2025 WNBA Finals on October 10 nine months ago. She played nearly 18 minutes, scored 8 points, grabbed 2 rebounds, and dished out an assist. After everything she has been through this season with that left leg injury, seeing her back on the court at The House was the kind of moment that puts a loss in perspective. Welcome back, DE.
Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young were steady but couldn't do enough
Gray had 9 points and 6 assists, continuing her remarkable free throw streak she has now made 22 consecutive free throws since June 21 and has not missed since. Young had 15 points and has been perfect from the line for 28 straight attempts since June 17. Those individual streaks of excellence are worth noting even in a rough team performance. Both of them competed with the right effort the problem was too much of the roster around them couldn't match it on this particular night.
Indiana was excellent
Let me give the Fever their credit because they earned it. Mitchell went for 27 and was virtually unstoppable in the first quarter setting the tone that never changed. Aliyah Boston had a double-double. Sophie Cunningham came off the bench and hit three threes in the fourth quarter. Indiana shot 48.4 percent from the field and 48.4 percent from three on the road, against the defending champions. That's a Fever team playing the best basketball they've played all season.
My take
This was a bad loss. The worst of the season. Third game in four days, no juice in the defense, cold shooting in the second half, and an Indiana team that had no mercy. The Aces know what this was fatigue catching up to a thin rotation in a brutal scheduling stretch and they also know it cannot become a habit.
The good news is the schedule gives them grace. Las Vegas has a well-earned break before traveling to Toronto for their first meeting against the Tempo on July 20 at 5pm on Peacock. After a performance like Sunday's, that rest comes at exactly the right time.