WNBA playoffs: For Aces to even series with Fever, A'ja Wilson needs supporting cast to step up: 'God forbid, A’ja doesn't drop 40 for us'

LAS VEGAS — Becky Hammon readily admits time and again she’s run out of adjectives to describe A’ja Wilson. So the morning Wilson publicly accepted her WNBA record fourth MVP, Hammon took a different route.

“There's no Mount Rushmore,” Hammon said she told Wilson. “You are the only one. You're Everest.”

That may well be true in the halls of basketball greatness. But, in the bright lights of Michelob Ultra Arena, Wilson needs more faces next to her. She can’t be the only one contributing on a nightly basis if the Las Vegas Aces are to advance out of the semifinals.

They’ll look to even the series against the Indiana Fever in Game 2 on Tuesday (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) before the best-of-five shifts to Indianapolis.

The day Wilson was named MVP, it was award finalist Kelsey Mitchell who took over in Game 1 to steal a game for the underdogs while Wilson scored 16 points on a paltry 27.3 field goal percentage. It’s the third time since the Aces began their 16-game regular season winning streak on Aug. 3 that Wilson scored 16 or fewer.

“She had a lot of great looks,” Hammon said. “She just missed. And that happens. Even the greatest players have nights off the light where they miss.”

Hammon called the early ones “momentum breakers.” Fever forward Aliyah Boston won the matchup from the onset, and Indiana had the luxury of switching former Defensive Player of the Year Natasha Howard onto the league’s leading scorer. Indiana won the paint, 50-38, while simultaneously running the Aces off the 3-point line, and limited their time at the free-throw line.

“We knew that we needed to force them to play individually,” Fever head coach Stephanie White said. “We can't let them ping the ball around. They're too good. And I thought our attention to detail for the most part was really good.”

The Aces’ 41.4 assist rate was a season low, and the 12 assists were their second-fewest. They’re 0-7 when making fewer than 15. Without Wilson going to work inside, the Aces struggled to generate offense and the Fever reached into passing lanes for seven steals, all in the first three quarters.

Jackie Young scored a game-high 19 points, but six of those were in the fourth quarter of a 14-point game. Jewell Loyd’s goose egg through three quarters as their All-Star reserve hurt, and Chelsea Gray’s 13 points (5-of-12) weren’t enough.

“We’ve got to bet better for [Wilson],” reserve guard Dana Evans, who scored 14 off the bench, said. “She deals with a lot. She’s getting double-teamed, triple-teamed. We have to take some pressure off of her.”

Hammon isn’t concerned, per se, that the team won’t correct the issue.

“I know we’re capable, but not when we play like that,” she said. “God forbid, A’ja doesn't drop 40 for us.”

Las Vegas runs on Wilson and Young, and for 16 consecutive games to end the regular season, it worked. The duo combined for 42.5 of the team’s league-best 88.6 points per game since the streak began on Aug. 3. They each were better than 52% from the field, including a 42% clip for Young from 3-point range.

It continued into the first-round series against Seattle. They combined for 47 in Game 1 and 46 in the Game 2 loss, while each shooting at least 50% in each. In Game 3, Wilson had to score 38 for the Aces to have a chance in the final minutes of the winner-take-all matchup at home. Young, who scored 14, put back Wilson’s miss for the winning bucket in the final 12 seconds.

The Fever’s sixth seed is a misnomer in a league deep on parity this year. Every round of the playoffs becomes more difficult, and Wilson can’t be the only one in this case. The Aces, even as good as they’ve been, don’t want to head to a rowdy Gainbridge Fieldhouse down 0-2.

“I'll say this, she doesn't normally lay two stinkers in a row,” Hammon said. “She's somebody who bounces back [and] makes the adjustments, but it's on the rest of us to kind of give her support on a night maybe when it’s not going in.”