Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- Two of the WNBA's top teams collide Tuesday — the Aces and Liberty — in a preview of the Commissioner's Cup final.
- One team holds a narrow edge in offensive firepower while the other leads defensively, creating a tight battle.
- The outcome hinges on whether a key player can overcome injury limitations to return to elite form.
Could we have a WNBA Finals preview on Tuesday night? At the very least, we have a WNBA Commissioner's Cup final preview, as one week before the two sides meet to determine the winner of that competition, the New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces are set to hit the court.
In the preseason, all the talk was about these being the league's two best teams, and while the Minnesota Lynx's strong start coupled with how well the Atlanta Dream have played makes that a four-team question, this is still a huge matchup. The question is: which team has the advantage?
Why the Las Vegas Aces should be favored against the New York Liberty
I think there are actually two questions here, but I'm only going to answer the first one, which is "which team is better right now?" (The other is which is better when both at a full strength — New York doesn't feel fully rounded into form yet.)
As you can guess from the heading of this section, I view the Aces as the better team at the moment, though the gap is close enough that anything can happen. In fact, both teams actually have the same net rating on the season at plus-7.4. The Liberty have been the better defensive team, while the Aces have been a bit better on the offensive end.
Probably the biggest thing that the Aces have in their favor at the moment is the backcourt of Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young. While A'ja Wilson is the team's best player, New York is the rare team with the right frontcourt defensively to...
Well, I don't want to say "contain" her, or "slow her down," but maybe just to, like, make her look like a top-five player instead of a top-one player? Wilson will still get her numbers, but she might be forced to take a few tougher shots than usual, or to move the ball back outside.
But Gray and Young should find fairly easy sledding against this Liberty team right now. Not many teams have this level of backcourt talent, and with Sabrina Ionescu still hobbled a bit by her back injury, the team is going to end up either with a bad matchup from whoever they stick Ionescu on, or they'll need to sub Ionescu out and run a lineup with more defensive stoppers, but that potentially limits the team's playmaking ability on the other end.
What does New York need to do to upset Vegas?
How can the Liberty win this game? Simple: Ionescu has to get going.
The former No. 1 overall pick has played in just five games this season and has shot over 40 percent just once. Her on/off numbers are...not great.
Net Rating | |
|---|---|
Ionescu ON | -5.97 |
Ionescu OFF | +9.71 |
New York needs Ionescu — theoretically the team's second or third-best player after Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones — to actually look like the Ionescu we've seen in past campaigns. At her best, she's an elite playmaker who can score off the dribble and knock down open 3-pointers, but the 2026 version of her has decidedly not been that. At some point, that has to change...right?
It's kind of the big question about this team's ceiiling. New York just lost a couple of close games to fringe playoff contenders that they would have won if they'd gotten peak Ionescu, but instead, the team lost winnable games.
If Ionescu plays like she has, New York loses. Sure, they could bench her and run more Marine Johannes at the point, but then that weakens the bench. The real answer is that you keep plugging away with Ionescu until she figures it out, and for the Liberty to beat the Aces on Tuesday — or in next week's Commissioner's Cup final — the team will need her to figure it out quickly.
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