The Aces are looking to repeat as champions. The Liberty are the last original franchise without a WNBA trophy. While the matchup was inevitable, their journeys to get here were very different.
Michael Voepel covers the WNBA, women's college basketball, and other college sports for espnW. Voepel began covering women's basketball in 1984, and has been with ESPN since 1996.ended April 4, 2007. She was traded to San Antonio, which ended up being a boon to the rest of her playing days and then her coaching career. But it's not as if she just stopped caring about the team with whom she spent her first eight years in the WNBA.
For the first time since 2002, New York is in the WNBA Finals. It is the last active original WNBA franchise to not win a league title. While that doesn't necessarily seem to weigh on the current players -- none of whom have been with the team more than four seasons -- longtime fans at last feel like happy days are here again. It's been quite a wait.that moved to Las Vegas in 2018 and saw almost immediate success, winning its first title last year in Hammon's first season as coach..
The Aces were still in San Antonio then as the Stars and had posted the league's worst record for the third season in a row. They were no longer wanted by the Spurs' ownership -- which had brought the WNBA franchise to Texas in 2003 from Utah, where it began in the league's inaugural year of 1997. "There was so much energy in that building. We were engaged with fans, big time," Hammon said of playing for the Liberty during that time."We were a blue-collar team, we played really hard, and New York loved us. There were several older players who had this great camaraderie."
New York improved to 12-20 and returned to the playoffs in 2021, but it wasn't enough for coach Walt Hopkins to keep his job. Around the same time, the Laimbeer had left the Liberty to take over the Aces when MGM Resorts International moved the team to Las Vegas in 2018. Then in January 2021, Raiders owner Mark Davis purchased the Aces from MGMRI.
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