The Aces Are Running Out of Players: Inside Las Vegas’s Injury Crisis Before a Must-Win Game 2

There is “shorthanded,” and then there is whatever the Las Vegas Aces are right now — a defending champion running out of players. When the injury report dropped Tuesday night, five names told the story of a team being held together with tape: Jewell Loyd doubtful, Dana Evans doubtful, Stephanie Talbot questionable, NaLyssa Smith done for the season — and a must-win Game 2 in San Francisco that Las Vegas cannot afford to lose.

Loyd’s left leg injury is the freshest wound. The veteran guard exited Game 1 just over two minutes into the third quarter, scoreless in 17 minutes with two rebounds and an assist, and never came back. She wasn’t even on the initial Tuesday injury report — then popped up as doubtful at 8 PM ET, which tells you plenty about how the day went. Evans, limited to 14 games all season by the right knee, remains doubtful. Talbot, who has missed two straight playoff games with her leg injury, is questionable — the one sliver of good news on the sheet. Smith, who started 38 games before the season-ending left leg injury, is simply gone. Loyd’s regular-season value went beyond her 8 points a game — 2.3 rebounds, 1.4 assists and a steal a night, plus the screen assists Hammon says never show up in a box score.

This is the same group that just survived a three-game first-round war with Indiana — and Loyd was central to that survival. Hammon singled her out after the Game 3 win over the Fever: “The amount of screen assists that she gets never really shows up on a stat sheet,” the coach said. That invisible work is exactly what a thinning rotation can’t replace: the screening, the defensive rotations, the veteran calm when the offense stalls. Without her, the “next woman up” list gets short in a hurry.

Hammon has never been one to dress things up, and Sunday night she didn’t bother. “I think that was one of our more atrocious games of the season,” she said, pointing at the glass: 52-25, Valkyries, including 17 offensive rebounds that became 20 second-chance points. Then the gallows optimism she’s famous for: “Good news is we played like (expletive) and only lost by 10. So dissect that however you want.” And the mandate, inside a locker room with nobody left to feel sorry for it, came straight from Hammon: “We just got to go with what’s sitting on that bench,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time to sulk about it. Nobody feels bad for us. It’s just the next woman up.” Our full daily roundup on both Game 2s is here.

The 71-60 final flattered the Aces’ offense and indicted everything else. Sixty points is their season low. A’ja Wilson scored 24 but needed 21 shots to get there and grabbed all of four rebounds — for the team’s best rebounder, that number is the crisis in miniature. Chelsea Gray added 16, including 10 in the third quarter, and Jackie Young had 11; Gray and Young combined to shoot 9-of-29. The bench managed seven points to Golden State’s 25. And here’s the cruelest footnote: in the third quarter, Chelsea Gray became the WNBA’s all-time playoff assists leader, feeding Wilson for a three-point play — a historic night, in a loss. Gabby Williams was the best player on the floor for the winners: 25 points, 11 rebounds, five assists. Kya Stokes owned the paint with 14 rebounds and three blocks.

The path back starts with the glass, and it might start with Talbot. If the wing is cleared, Las Vegas gets back size, defensive versatility and a rebounder — exactly the three things that got buried Sunday. Wilson can’t shoot 38 percent again and win this series; Gray needs someone besides Young creating beside her; and the “frenzy” ball movement that carved them up has to be met with force instead of fouls. “You take away even half of their second-chance points, and it’s a different ball game,” Chelsea Gray said. The Valkyries are 30-3 this season, playoffs included, when they hold an opponent under 80. The Aces just gave them the blueprint for doing it again — and Golden State’s league-leading bench, which poured in 25 points to Las Vegas’s seven, only deepens the rotation gap while the injury report stays crowded.

And the building will be loud. Chase Center has turned into “Ballhalla” for this run — a roaring Bay Area crowd that fed the Valkyries’ defensive frenzy in Game 1 — and a wounded Aces team walking into that noise is the nightmare scenario for a defending champion. The rotation that answers has to start with Wilson playing like the MVP she is, not the 8-of-21 version, and a bench that managed seven points Sunday finding someone — anyone — who can give Hammon real minutes. Mai Yamamoto showed flashes in Game 1; the Aces need a lot more than flashes now.

Fall to 0-2 and the math turns cruel: three straight wins needed, with the series shifting to Las Vegas on Friday and a potential Game 5 back in the Bay. Win, and it’s a best-of-three with two games at home and a hobbled-but-breathing roster. The defending champs have been here — they reached the Finals last postseason after dropping a semifinal opener. They’ve just never been this thin doing it. Wednesday night, we find out what “next woman up” is really worth.