Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon did not hide her frustration with the WNBA schedule after a brutal turnaround forced her to prioritize player health over one of the league’s marquee national television matchups.
The Aces faced the New York Liberty on Sunday afternoon at Barclays Center less than 24 hours after playing the Minnesota Lynx in Minneapolis. Las Vegas had also been navigating a demanding stretch of travel, with the New York game coming during a five-city, nine-day road trip.
With the condensed schedule in mind, Hammon rested A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young against New York. All three are among the Aces’ most important players, turning what had been positioned as a potential playoff preview into a heavily depleted matchup. The Liberty ultimately cruised to a 111-71 victory.
Before the game, Hammon made it clear that her decision was about protecting her players rather than dismissing the significance of the matchup.
“Everybody has a brutal schedule at some point. I don’t even think they do this in the NBA though, where it’s less than 24 hours,” Hammon said. “You can check, and I’m pretty sure that’s not even legal on the NBA side. You’d have to look it up, but I don’t recall. With the time change, it ends up being that. But we’re going to always err on the side of health and safety for our players. Not going to put them in any kind of jeopardy to get hurt when we’ve been expending a lot of energy and traveling a lot of miles back and forth, crisscrossing the country. So it is what it is. I know these are big matchups, and these are what people want to see. But you should ensure that it’s fair.”
Hammon’s comparison with the NBA was expressed as her own recollection, rather than a definitive statement about NBA scheduling rules. Her broader point, however, was unmistakable: asking players to travel between cities and compete again with such a short turnaround creates a situation she considers unnecessarily risky.
The timing was particularly unfortunate because Las Vegas-New York is exactly a matchup the WNBA wants to showcase. The teams have developed into two of the league’s most recognizable contenders, and Sunday’s game was televised nationally on ABC. Instead, fans saw an Aces team without Wilson, Gray or Young.
Hammon accepted that every team encounters difficult portions of the schedule. Her objection was to the combination of travel, limited recovery time and the expectation that stars should still be available for a showcase game.
