The Las Vegas Aces made one of the biggest moves of the WNBA offseason, taking part in a multi-team trade that sent Kelsey Plum to the Sparks and brought Jewell Loyd to Sin City.
Vegas lost a lot of depth from last year's team, putting the team's status as an elite team in some jeopardy, though they can only drop so much considering they have the best player in the world, A'ja Wilson, on the roster.
Here are three key questions for the Las Vegas Aces in 2025.
Will Jewell Loyd be able to play the Kelsey Plum role?
Kelsey Plum was the perfect player for Vegas. While she brought a kind of brash swagger to the floor, she was also the perfect team player, someone who did everything she was asked to do. Did Vegas need her to take a game over? No problem! Did it need her to play more of a facilitator role some nights? Sure thing!
But now, Vegas replaces her with Jewell Loyd in a move that's...interesting.
Loyd's a talented scorer, but she's struggled at times with efficiency. Mostly, that meant she wasn't connecting on shots inside the arc, but last year the inefficiency extended outside, as she shot just 27.4 percent from 3-point range, her worst mark since her rookie year in 2015.
Can Loyd succeed as an off-ball catch-and-shoot player? She's spent the last four years as one of the league's highest-usage guards, ranking in the top 10 in usage rate in each season. Scaling that down could lead to Loyd playing her best basketball, or it could lead to struggles as she has to completely adjust her style of play.
Will Chelsea Gray bounce back?
Chelsea Gray's 2024 season was a disaster. She didn't debut until late June because of injury and once she was back, she struggled to produce like she had in the past. In her first seven games back, Gray scored in double figures just once. She ended up shooting 40.8 percent from the floor, the worst mark of her WNBA career.
What's more, Gray — often considered the league's best point guard — averaged her fewest assists since 2017 and posted her highest turnover rate ever.
Vegas needs Gray to look like the pre-2024 version of herself if the team wants to win another title, but can the 32-year-old get back to that level?
I tend to bet on a bounce back here, though she might not be able to wrest the title of best point guard back from Caitlin Clark. Still, if a healthy Gray can get back to hitting big shots, that would go a long way toward helping the Aces contend. With Plum gone, the assist numbers should go up, as Vegas will likely ask Loyd to bring the ball up and initiate things less than it asked Plum to, as Plum has averaged 4.2 assists or more per game in three straight seasons, a number Loyd has never reached.
Does Vegas have the frontcourt depth to be a title contender?
A'ja Wilson is the best player in the WNBA. Full stop. No debate. There are a number of other really, really good players vying for the role of "second-best player in the WNBA," but Wilson is the best.
With that said, can Vegas win if Wilson is its only good frontcourt player?
Cheyenne Parker-Tyus was supposed to be a big part of this team this year, but she'll miss most of the year because of her pregnancy. With Parker-Tyus gone, the non-Wilson frontcourt rotation is Kiah Stokes, Megan Gustafson and Elizabeth Kitley.
Stokes is a good team player, someone who isn't afraid to do the dirty work inside, but she's not a scorer. Gustafson might be a scorer — in 2023 with the Mercury, she was 21st in the league in points per 40 minutes — but she's currently sidelined with a leg injury and also has never averaged more than 15.1 minutes per game. And Kitley is a rookie who missed what would have been her original rookie season in 2024 with an injury. She was really good in college at Virginia Tech, but there were questions even before her ACL tear about her WNBA role — she finishes well inside on offense, but she doesn't really do anything else but that.
That frontcourt depth is definitely a major concern for the Aces, and the only real solution is probably just "wait for Parker-Tyus to come back and hope things don't fall apart before that."