Thursday, July 16, 2026 | 2 a.m.<\/p>\n
Jackie Young\u2019s best game of the season came in the biggest game of the season so far, but it still ended in heartbreak for the Las Vegas Aces.<\/p>\n
The eighth-year shooting guard scored 25 points in the second half of the Commissioner\u2019s Cup Championship on June 30 at the New York Liberty and led the Aces to take a fourth-quarter lead despite a 13-point halftime deficit.<\/p>\n
But the Liberty roared back for a 93-85 victory clinched when Young, in her words, \u201csmoked\u201d a layup with 30 seconds remaining. She wore her devastation by staring down with slumped shoulders, but longtime teammate A\u2019ja Wilson, who missed the game with an ankle injury, was there to console her when time expired.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve played together throughout my entire career and have had a lot of big moments together, highs and lows, and she\u2019s always been by my side,\u201d Young said in the postgame news conference. \u201cShe\u2019s stuck with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson, and the Aces, couldn\u2019t be happier about the partnership. Young is Wilson\u2019s perfect sidekick, which should be evident as the Aces have won three of the past four WNBA titles. But sometimes it feels obscured.<\/p>\n
Wilson demands so much of the attention on her own, considering she\u2019s in the midst of statistically the best five-year run in WNBA history and an odds-on favorite to win her fourth Most Valuable Player award in the span.<\/p>\n
And the other member of the Aces\u2019 big three, point guard Chelsea Gray, is making history on a near nightly basis. Gray tied a WNBA record with nine three-pointers in an earlier Commissioner\u2019s Cup game and also became the fifth player in league history to reach 2,000 career assists while becoming the Aces\u2019 all-time franchise leader in the category around the same time.<\/p>\n
The extroverted personalities of Wilson and Gray also seem to outshine Young\u2019s more stoic nature, but she\u2019s been as loud as ever on the court.<\/p>\n
Young recently made her fifth straight All-Star Game, scheduled for July 25 in Chicago, after posting career highs in assists (6.8 per game) and rebounds (4.5) over the first half of the season. She\u2019s also averaging 16.5 points per game, her second-highest ever, and shooting 37.4% from three-point range, her best mark since a career year in 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe can score in the most intuitive ways,\u201d Gray said of Young. \u201c(She\u2019s) somebody that can just be a load every time she touches the basketball, even her off-ball cutting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aces coach Becky Hammon said Young claiming a larger chunk of the Aces\u2019 offense this year, especially from a playmaking perspective, is all by design. Hammon challenged Young at the beginning of the season to be more aggressive and comfortable with the ball in her hands.<\/p>\n
Young gladly accepted the slight uptick in responsibility. It\u2019s the type of request that keeps her moving forward as Young, like Wilson, is never fully satisfied and regularly talks about trying to grow her game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always put in the work,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n
Young recorded a season-high 31 total points in the Cup loss to the Liberty, with the performance yet another glimpse of the bulk scoring she\u2019s capable of without Wilson in the lineup. There\u2019s little doubt she could be the top option for a different WNBA squad.<\/p>\n
The temptation to lead a team outside of Wilson\u2019s considerable shadow has proven too much to ignore for some Aces over the years, most notably Kelsey Plum, who forced a trade to the Los Angeles Sparks two offseasons ago. But Young has never given any indication she would ever want to be anywhere else.<\/p>\n
She might never be the face of the franchise with the Aces, but she\u2019s more than happy to chase history as a standout No. 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a perfectionist, demands a lot out of herself,\u201d Hammon said after the Cup loss to the Liberty. \u201cI need her to give herself a little more grace in some scenarios. The ball will be back in her hands late in games.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story originally appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thursday, July 16, 2026 | 2 a.m. Jackie Young\u2019s best game of the season came in the biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-766135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}