The Defending Champs Aren’t Defending

Kelsey Plum spent much of this past Wednesday’s Lynx-Aces game complaining to and about the refs. She brought up uneven officiating in a halftime sideline interview: The Lynx “move on all their screens.” But by the time the postgame press conference started, the Vegas guard had somewhat changed her tune. “She cooked me,” Plum said, trying to explain Minnesota guard Courtney Williams’s 22-point performance that night. “She had it tonight, and when you get your ass kicked, you gotta give the other people credit.”

That’s one reason not to read too much into that game, and why I felt uncomfortable using it to construct some broader point about the Las Vegas Aces’ defense, which dominated last season but has so far disappointed in 2024. Sometimes other team will just shoot well. The Lynx finished 11-for-19 from behind the arc in their 98-87 win on Wednesday. Williams indeed cooked Plum, but as head coach Becky Hammon pointed out afterward, Williams almost exclusively takes the “long, off-the-dribble twos” teams can live with giving up. Minnesota punished every botched defensive rotation—the same thing they’ve done to 10 other teams. That probably says more about the Lynx than it does about the Aces.