The Las Vegas Aces’ road to three-peating is dangerously close to an end.
The New York Liberty jumped out to a 2-0 series lead over the two-time defending champions in this year’s semifinals, putting them within a win of the WNBA Finals.
With their backs against the wall, the Aces will return to Sin City on Friday looking to keep their season alive on their home floor.
After falling behind 2-0, the Aces will need to make history to reach another WNBA Finals, and just one slip-up will result in the end of their season.
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Here’s a look back at series comebacks in WNBA playoff history as Las Vegas tries to climb out of its semifinals deficit:
Has a WNBA team ever come back from a 2-0 playoff series deficit?
No team has actually pulled off what the Aces are attempting to accomplish against the Liberty.
Best-of-five playoff series were introduced for the WNBA Finals in 2005 and expanded to the league semifinals in 2016. In that time, every team that has ever fallen into a 2-0 hole in that format has wound up losing the series.
The 2018 Phoenix Mercury came the closest to pulling off the improbable turnaround. They lost the first two games of their semifinal series to the Storm in Seattle before bouncing back with consecutive wins in Phoenix to force a Game 5. The Storm returned to the Pacific Northwest and took care of business in the win-or-go-home Game 5, winning 94-84 to avoid ending up on the wrong side of history.
Has a WNBA team ever come back from a 2-1 playoff series deficit?
While no team has come all the way back from a 2-0 series hole, the Aces can look to some examples of teams that came back from 2-1 – including themselves.
There have been seven instances of a team overcoming a 2-1 series deficit to come out on top. Four of those have taken place in the WNBA Finals and three have come in the semifinals.
- 2006 WNBA Finals: Shock over Monarchs
- 2007 WNBA Finals: Mercury over Shock
- 2009 WNBA Finals: Mercury over Fever
- 2017 WNBA Finals: Lynx over Sparks
- 2018 WNBA Semifinals: Mystics over Dream
- 2020 WNBA Semifinals: Aces over Sun
- 2022 WNBA Semifinals: Sun over Sky
How many WNBA teams have come back from a 1-0 deficit to win a best-of-three series?
The most common series comeback in the WNBA playoffs has happened in best-of-three matchups. In all, 34 teams have lost Game 1 in a best-of-three series before winning the next two games.
A closer look at the WNBA’s early playoff format helps explain why such comebacks were so common. From 1998 to 2009, the team with home-court advantage played Game 1 on the road before hosting its opponent for Games 2 and 3. Twenty-three teams came back from 1-0 deficits in three-game series during that span with a majority of them winning the last two contests at home.
From 2010 to 2015, the WNBA made it so teams with home-court advantage were at their own arenas for Games 1 and 3. Still, nine teams overcame 1-0 deficits under that format.
The league removed best-of-three series from its playoff layout from 2016 to 2021, moving to single elimination in the early rounds before moving to best-of-five matchups. They were added back in 2022 for the first round.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article was published in September 2022.
