The Las Vegas Aces collected a historic number of awards and accolades during the 2022 WNBA season, culminating with the first title in franchise history.
The Las Vegas Aces crowned their season with a 78-71 victory over the Connecticut Sun in Game 4 of the WNBA Finals, taking home the league’s biggest prize. But the WNBA Championship trophy isn’t the only piece they’ve picked up this season.
The Aces also defeated Chicago Sky in July to secure 2022 WNBA Commissioner’s CupAn in-season competition featuring 61 games throughout the regular season, with players competing for a $500,000 prize pool and an additional $165,000 for charitable and civic organizations.
Then there were the individual awards.
A’ja Wilson won the MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards for the regular season, becoming the fifth player in league history to win both in the same season.
It was a foregone conclusion that one of the Aces would be a WNBA Finals MVP after winning the series, but the honor went to Chelsea Gray who averaged 18.3 points, 6.0 assists and 3.0 rebounds in the series, with a 67.2 real shooting percentage.
First-Year Coach Becky Hammon won the WNBA Coach of the Year award. Goalkeeper Jackie Young won the best player award. Kelsey Plum won the WNBA All-Star Game MVP Junior Cup in July. This is an unprecedented number of regular season awards for a team that also won the championship.
Nobody has as many trophies as Las Vegas Ice
The only other WNBA Champion to have even received three awards in the regular season was the 2000 Houston Comets, for which Cynthia Cooper won the Player of the Year award, Sheryl Soops won the Defensive Player of the Year, and Tina Thompson won the All-Star Player of the Year award.
Some teams may have made it to this list if the WNBA gave the Year Six Player of the Year award prior to 2007, or if the All-Star game has been played since the league’s inception and during the summer the Olympics were also held. But even so, no one was likely to have picked up the Aces this year.
In addition, this year’s Aces earned seven All-Star, All-Defense, All-Rookie and All-WNBA picks. Only three other WNBA champions made it to eight, 2011, 2013 and 2017 Minnesota Lynx. Those three teams won a sum Four trophies in the regular season, fewer than the Aces this season only.
Winning is so much more than just winning titles, but no WNBA team has won titles like the 2022 Las Vegas Aces.
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