Michael Voepel, ESPN Senior Writer
LAS VEGAS — Kelsey Plum wasn't herself. Projectile vomiting all through the Las Vegas Aces' opening recreation of the WNBA playoffs could have that impact.
But the guard additionally knew she wanted to push previous her subpar efficiency, and located herself determining the trail forward the following day in a peculiar setting.
“I sat at a sushi bar,” Plum stated at an ensuing information convention. “And was just like, ‘You know what, I'm going to throw Game 1 out the window.'”
A'ja Wilson, seated subsequent to Plum, stared at her Aces teammate and appeared a bit queasy herself.
“After you threw up, you went and got sushi?” Wilson stated.
“Hey,” Plum replied, “it worked.”
Indeed, Plum and the Aces overcame the Seattle Storm within the first spherical. But the semifinals have been a completely different story for the two-time defending WNBA champions. The New York Liberty lead 2-0 after taking the primary two video games at dwelling within the best-of-five sequence. But whether or not it was Plum navigating a high-profile divorce and serving to the Aces overcome their most regular-season losses in 5 years, or Las Vegas chasing a three-peat amid accidents and off-court controversies, the season has been outlined by tuning out the noise.
Now the Aces should win three in a row in opposition to the Liberty, beginning with Friday's Game 3 in Las Vegas (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2). No WNBA staff has ever rallied to win a sequence when down 0-2. And Las Vegas has misplaced 5 in a row to New York this 12 months, together with three regular-season conferences.
Plum and the Aces hope they'll regain their magic in Las Vegas. But regardless of the final result of this season, Plum stated she is glad she has battled by way of it.
“I'm proud I showed up this year,” Plum instructed ESPN. “The fact that I'm playing basketball now is a great achievement. Obviously, we really want another championship. But I also feel like I already won. Everything else is kind of house money.”
As passionate and outgoing a participant as Plum is, she would favor her personal life to remain personal. But that wasn't to be.
“Going through a very public divorce is something I was not expecting,” Plum stated of the dissolution of her marriage to former NFL participant Darren Waller. “It felt like the rug got taken out from under me. I think people may look at me like, ‘Oh, she's super tough.' But this one really broke me.
“I deleted social media off my cellphone. I received a new cellphone, and haven't got very many individuals's numbers. I turned off TV and simply received into studying my Bible. I'll simply say that emotionally, I'll be feeling this for a very long time.”
Plum credit these closest to her, together with her Aces teammates, with serving to her.
“I'm just grateful I have really great people around me to help pick up the pieces,” Plum stated. “But what I'm most proud of is, all throughout the ups and downs, it hasn't taken away my joy.”
She stated that is the happiness she nonetheless will get from basketball. Even in a 27-13 season the place every little thing did not go the Aces' manner as a lot because it did in 2023's 34-6 season, Plum is grateful for the routine and camaraderie.
“The biggest thing is making sure she understands that we're always here,” stated Wilson, who like Plum was a No. 1 WNBA draft choose. “I have her back no matter what. It could be those dark days we've all been down that may look different for each of us, but we get it.
“I'm going to be there every step of the way in which. Whether that is getting on her nerves, leaving her alone a little, checking in on her.”
Their seven seasons playing together, including on the U.S. Olympic team, makes their communication second nature.
“I really feel like we positively have a language of our personal,” Wilson said. “We know methods to get underneath one another's pores and skin, however on the similar time make one another higher.”
Like the Aces, Plum has had her peaks and valleys in these playoffs. She scored simply 2 factors on 1-of-8 capturing in Game 1 vs. Seattle. After the sushi and a thoughts reset, she had 29 factors on 11-of-15 capturing to steer the Aces to a Game 2 victory that clinched the sequence.
In Game 1 in opposition to New York on Sunday, Plum had 24 factors, capturing 9-of-17. In Game 2, she was one of many targets of coach Becky Hammon's wrath throughout a timeout and completed with simply 6 factors after going 2-of-9.
The Aces have talked a lot about how this 12 months has been more difficult than the previous two seasons, which each ended with championships. Las Vegas was with out level guard Chelsea Gray for the primary 12 video games as she rehabbed the foot harm that stored her out of final 12 months's title-clinching Game 4 of the WNBA Finals.
Las Vegas was 6-6 when Gray returned, and the Aces then began to look extra like themselves. Yet their offensive effectivity, defensive reliability and championship aura have not stayed constant.
Hammon attributes it partially to the remainder of the league working arduous to catch the Aces and the way tough it's to remain hungrier than groups like New York, which has by no means gained the league championship.
Now, the Aces should discover that starvation themselves. For Plum, it means digging deep into reserves she has constructed up through the years.
As profitable as her school profession was at Washington — taking this system to its first Final Four in 2016 and setting the NCAA profession scoring report in 2017 — she recollects having to do a lot of self-reflection about balancing who she was as a particular person in addition to a participant.
When Plum thinks again to her WNBA rookie season because the No. 1 choose in 2017 — for a franchise on the finish of its run in San Antonio earlier than going to Las Vegas the following 12 months — she shakes her head. She did not know the place she match into a staff that wasn't certain the place it was headed.
“It just felt like quicksand,” Plum stated.
During Plum's first three seasons within the WNBA, she averaged 8.5, 9.5 and eight.6 factors. In 2020, she tore her Achilles tendon and missed the season, which she calls a blessing in disguise as a result of she recharged whereas she rehabbed. In 2021, Plum got here off the bench all season, incomes her Sixth Player of the Year — an award she by no means needed. She was decided to begin once more.
Working out in late 2021, Plum received a name from new Aces coach Hammon, who had taken over for Bill Laimbeer. Plum had a typically rocky relationship with Laimbeer: She appreciated the issues he taught her, however not all the time his tone.
Hammon instructed Plum her preliminary impression of the staff was that Plum coming off the bench had labored. Plum received off that decision too livid to even end her exercise.
“I remember hanging up the phone,” Plum stated, “and thinking, ‘I'm going to come into training camp like a possessed human being. I'm going to run everyone into the ground and make it very clear that this is my spot.'”
Hammon laughs remembering it, as a result of Plum did precisely that. She has began and averaged 20.2, 18.7 and 17.8 factors whereas being an All-Star the previous three seasons. She gained Olympic gold in 3×3 in 2021 and in 5-on-5 this 12 months.
“I don't think she felt valued before,” Hammon stated. “I've tried to put a lot of trust in her and let her grow. Not only as a basketball player, but off the court. She has had so much growth, through some really hard stuff. She's just really blossomed into this beautiful person.”
Iowa's Caitlin Clark handed Plum's NCAA report to a lot acclaim in February. At the time, Plum appeared nearly disengaged from her spot in historical past. But she then defined that she did not bear in mind it as a joyful interval. It grew to become an excessive amount of about reaching numbers and never in regards to the essence of why she performs.
That's what Plum stated she all the time needs to carry onto. The Aces have their backs to the wall now. But no matter occurs, Plum is aware of she stood as much as the numerous challenges.
“You go through things in life and build this level of resilience,” she stated. “Sometimes you say, ‘Why is this happening?' But then you realize if you didn't go through things before, you wouldn't be able to handle it now.”
