In less than a decade, the Las Vegas Aces have gone from relocated newcomers to the defining dynasty of the modern WNBA. The franchise was born in 1997 as the Utah Starzz, became the San Antonio Silver Stars in 2003, and finally moved to the Strip as the Las Vegas Aces in 2018, settling into the Michelob ULTRA Arena at Mandalay Bay. Three championships in four years — 2022, 2023 and 2025 — have turned every postseason into a clash of titans. Led by four-time MVP A’ja Wilson alongside Chelsea Gray, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young, the Aces have built fierce rivalries with the best teams in women’s basketball.
A great rivalry needs stakes, and few teams have generated as many high-stakes nights as Las Vegas. The Aces have reached the WNBA Finals four times since arriving in Nevada and have played a role in deciding the championship in nearly every season of their dynasty. The opponents below are not random matchups — they are the teams that pushed the Aces to their limits, the franchises that beat them when it mattered most, and the contenders that the Aces had to conquer to cement their place in history. Here are the matchups that have defined their era.
No rivalry captures the current WNBA better than Aces vs Liberty — superteam against superteam, A’ja Wilson against Breanna Stewart, Chelsea Gray against Sabrina Ionescu. It is the league’s premier blockbuster, and it has swung both ways.
In the 2023 WNBA Finals, Las Vegas beat New York in four games to win a second straight title — the first franchise in 21 years to repeat. The clincher was an instant classic, a 70–69 Game 4 thriller won on the road even though Chelsea Gray was sidelined by a foot injury. A’ja Wilson was named Finals MVP after a dominant series.
One year later the rivalry flipped. In the 2024 semifinals, the Liberty eliminated the Aces 3–1, closing it out with a 76–62 win in Las Vegas and ending the Aces’ bid for a three-peat. Sabrina Ionescu led New York in the clincher, and the loss stung deeply for a team that had spent two seasons as the benchmark of the league. New York went on to win its first championship.
What makes this rivalry unique is how evenly the two rosters are matched on paper. Both were assembled as deliberate “super-teams,” pairing established MVP-caliber stars with deep, versatile supporting casts. Every meeting — regular season or postseason — carries playoff intensity, and the head-to-head results often hint at how the title race will break. The lesson is clear: these two franchises set the standard the rest of the WNBA chases.
Before the Aces were champions, the Seattle Storm were the wall they could not climb. The rivalry carries both the worst night in franchise history and one of its most thrilling triumphs.
In the 2020 WNBA Finals, a Storm side built around Breanna Stewart and Sue Bird swept the Aces 3–0, finishing with a 92–59 rout in Game 3. A’ja Wilson had just won the regular-season MVP, yet Las Vegas had no answer for Seattle’s experience.
The reply came in the 2022 semifinals, when the now-loaded Aces beat Seattle 3–1 in Sue Bird’s final season. Game 3 was an all-time playoff sequence: Jackie Young tied it with a buzzer-beating layup after a Sue Bird corner three, and Las Vegas pulled away in overtime, 110–98, on the way to its first ring.
The Connecticut Sun are forever tied to the moment the Aces became champions. In the 2022 WNBA Finals, in Becky Hammon’s first season as head coach, Las Vegas defeated Connecticut in four games to capture the first title in franchise history. A’ja Wilson was again named Finals MVP, and a roster of Gray, Plum and Young announced itself as the league’s new measuring stick.
For Connecticut, the series was a near-miss that defined a frustrating era of contention without a title. For Las Vegas, it validated the entire rebuild — the franchise that had been swept two years earlier finally had its breakthrough. The two clubs have remained postseason fixtures, and their meetings carry the weight of a rivalry between organizations that consistently reach the final weekends of the season.
The Chicago Sky rivalry is about timing. The Sky won the 2021 championship just as the Aces were rising, and in 2022 the two clubs were the league’s heavyweights — Las Vegas earned the No. 1 seed over Chicago on a head-to-head tiebreaker. Their regular-season meetings were treated as title previews, a measuring stick between the defending champions and the franchise about to take the crown. The Sky’s core eventually broke up, but the Aces-Sky duels of that period helped define the WNBA’s super-team era.
Geography fuels the Aces vs Mercury rivalry. Phoenix is the nearest Western Conference contender, and the two have clashed repeatedly in the postseason. In the 2022 first round, Las Vegas swept Phoenix, including a 117–80 demolition in which the Aces drained a then-record 23 three-pointers.
The stakes peaked in the 2025 WNBA Finals, when the Aces swept the Mercury 4–0 to win their third championship in four years. A’ja Wilson was named Finals MVP, capping a season in which she also won league MVP and Defensive Player of the Year — a WNBA first.
The newest chapter pits A’ja Wilson against Napheesa Collier, widely seen as the two best players in the world. The Minnesota Lynx handed the Aces a stunning measuring-stick moment in 2024 — a 53-point road blowout, the largest in WNBA history. Wilson answered by winning the MVP award over Collier in both 2024 and 2025. Every time these two share a floor, it doubles as a referendum on who is the best player alive — a subplot that lends even regular-season games postseason gravity. With both franchises stacked and both stars in their primes, this is the rivalry most likely to define the league’s next several seasons.
The Aces’ rivalries trace the arc of a dynasty: humbled by Seattle in 2020, breakthrough against Connecticut in 2022, the back-and-forth heavyweight bouts with New York, the era-defining standard set against Chicago, the Western grudge with Phoenix, and the rising clash with Minnesota. To go deeper, explore the Aces legends and the franchise all-time leaders. Planning a trip? Check ticket prices, learn how to attend a game, and browse the schedule or the full blog.
The New York Liberty are the Aces’ biggest rival. The two superteams met in the 2023 Finals (won by Las Vegas) and the 2024 semifinals (won by New York), making it the WNBA’s premier modern matchup.
The Aces have won three WNBA titles — in 2022 (over Connecticut), 2023 (over New York) and 2025 (over Phoenix) — three championships in four years.
Yes. The Seattle Storm swept the Aces 3–0 in the 2020 WNBA Finals. Las Vegas got revenge by beating Seattle 3–1 in the 2022 semifinals.
The Aces play at the Michelob ULTRA Arena inside Mandalay Bay on the Las Vegas Strip, the franchise’s home since relocating from San Antonio in 2018.
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