Aces All-Star Chelsea Gray will make season debut against the Storm

The reigning back-to-back WNBA Champion Las Vegas Aces have gotten off to a rather slow 6-6 start to the 2024 campaign. and the absence of an All-Star might have something to do with that.

The Aces have played all 12 of their games without their best distributor, Chelsea Gray, who has been out all year with a foot injury that she suffered during last season's WNBA Finals. The Aces have done a nice job treading water in Gray's absence, but they clearly haven't been the same team without her.

Thankfully, Gray is set to make her season debut against the 9-5 Seattle Storm on Thursday night.

Aces get huge boost with Chelsea Gray returning from injury

The Aces are a team stacked with talent even without Gray with A'ja Wilson, Kelsey Plum, and Jackie Young all averaging over 17 points per game this season, but the rest of the team hasn't contributed much on the offensive side of the ball.

Gray is coming off a tremendous year in 2023 in which she averaged 15.3 points per game on 49.0/42.1/.897 splits to go along with 7.3 assists and 4.0 rebounds. She was an All-Star, made the Second Team All-WNBA, and finished seventh in the WNBA MVP balloting. She was the best distributor on each of their last two championship teams. Young and Plum have done a nice job picking up some of that slack, but Gray's presence has been missed dearly.

The Aces should've played better than they have without Gray, but this tough stretch shows how valuable she is. It's unclear as to how many minutes she can play in her first game back, but any amount will be much-needed against a really tough Storm team.

Gray has come up huge in big games before, and was even the WNBA Finals MVP two years ago. They'll need Gray to be clutch in the remainder of the regular season to get the Aces into the postseason where they can attempt to pull off the three-peat.