Sky coach Tyler Marsh and his mentor, Aces coach Becky Hammon, have won championships together in Las Vegas. They still call each other ride-or-dies. Hammon misses his calming presence and says they’ll be friends forever. Marsh admires her ability to know when to hound her players and when to lighten up.
This season marked their first apart in years, and both dealt with turbulence. The Aces, who won back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023 with Marsh on staff, shocked the league by not dominating and falling as low as eighth in the standings. They lost key players Kelsey Plum and Tiffany Hayes in the offseason and, in Marsh’s words, had to “re-identify themselves.”
Hammon agreed: “I just felt like I needed to remind them of who they were because I didn’t feel like we were being who we were supposed to be.”
The Sky had their own identity crisis. They lost glue piece Courtney Vandersloot in the seventh game and endured long stretches without Angel Reese and Ariel Atkins.
Hammon called that a brutal draw for a first-year coach. “I don’t care how good a coach you are, you could be Phil Jackson and John Wooden, you got to have your best players suited up and playing to win games,” she said.
Reese’s return has restored competitiveness — and offered a glimpse of a future built around her and Kamilla Cardoso controlling the paint. Meanwhile, the Aces have rediscovered themselves and extended their winning streak to 11 with a 79-74 victory against the Sky on Monday at Wintrust Arena. Marsh isn’t surprised: “They’ve got the best player in the world, and one of the best coaches in the world.”
Hammon, now back in the Coach of the Year conversation, said the turnaround came from persistence. “You keep coaching them up. It’s the most repetitive job in the world. It’s like parenting. You just keep repeating, and you just keep teaching and then you put them out there and hope they get it right.”
Self-discovery during recovery
Reese has responded well to her return from a back injury, with her minutes restriction now lifted. But she said she learned important things about herself during her three-week recovery. The most important, she said, was to prioritize herself and put herself first.
“Probably didn’t do that last year and just [tried] to go out there and play through every damn thing,” she said before the Liberty game in New York. “I can’t always do that. When everybody else wants me out there, I can’t do that.”
Now in her third game back, she says she feels good and motivated to finish strong. And Marsh plans to keep leaning on her as the season winds down.
“She understands how high-volume minutes she’s going to play, but she understands that we need her, and she’s willing to do whatever for our team,” he said.