Friday's Game 3 is a student-teacher series compressed into an elimination night for the teacher.
Natalie Nakase spent 2022 through 2024 as Becky Hammon's first assistant with the Las Vegas Aces, part of the staff on the 2022 and 2023 championship teams, before Golden State hired her as the Valkyries' first head coach in October 2024. She now brings a 2-0 WNBA semifinal lead into Michelob ULTRA Arena on Friday (6:30 p.m.
PT, Peacock/NBCSN), one win from ending Hammon's season on Hammon's floor.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal framed the matchup as student versus teacher when the series opened. The scoreboard has since made the framing concrete.
The 0-2 math Hammon already knows
No WNBA team has ever come back from an 0-2 deficit in a best-of-five series, NBC Sports Bay Area's playoff-comeback history noted in covering earlier Aces crises. Las Vegas lived that hole in the 2024 semifinals against New York: the Liberty took a 2-0 lead and closed the series 3-1.
Hammon's current club needs three straight wins - Friday, a potential Game 4, and a Game 5 - to rewrite a league pattern that has never bent.
After Wednesday's 83-81 loss at Chase Center, Hammon did not dress up the stakes. "I can't convince them that this is not a must-win, because if we lose we go home, and we stay home," she said, according to the Associated Press. She also credited Veronica Burton's late three as "massive" after Las Vegas "battled back" from what she called a "really abysmal first half."
Nakase's postgame lens was different. "We had multiple closers," she said in the Valkyries' recap. "It's so valuable when you have multiple people that can score any given night."
What Nakase built that now threatens her old bench
Golden State reached the playoffs in its first season - an expansion first, the AP noted - and is two wins into a Finals chase in year two. Tiffany Hayes, once an Ace, scored 21 off the bench in Game 2. Burton's only field goal of the night was the go-ahead three with 41 seconds left.