Las Vegas Aces forward A’ja Wilson, center, celebrates with teammates during a rally for the Las Vegas Aces on the Las Vegas Strip Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. The Aces beat the Connecticut Sun in the WNBA Finals to give Las Vegas its first professional championship.
Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022 | 2 a.m.
We’ve hosted the NHL All-Star game and the NFL Draft. Our teams have played in the Stanley Cup Final and on “Monday Night Football.”
The past five years have exceeded everyone’s expectations for major-league sports in the valley, as Las Vegas has firmly entrenched itself at the table of elite professional sports cities and has accentuated game nights with a party atmosphere. And now, thanks to our Las Vegas Aces, we get something every town dreams of hosting — a championship rally.
The Aces, fresh off winning the city’s first major championship Sunday in the WNBA Finals against Connecticut, will be front and center at 5:30 p.m. today on the Strip for a celebration that’s sure to be over-the-top.
Pop the champagne bottles, grab your favorite A’ja Wilson or Kelsey Plum jersey, help your kids make homemade signs and go support these amazing ladies who have so brilliantly represented our community.
The rally, which is free, starts at Caesars Palace and will head south on Las Vegas Boulevard. It’s scheduled to last one hour.
Our Las Vegas teams have set the bar in how a game night looks and feels, whether that’s Carlos Santana performing the national anthem Sunday at a Raiders game — that level of superstar is usually reserved for the Super Bowl — or the Golden Knights’ turning game-day into a ruckus party complete with a DJ and flashy pregame show. They changed how other NHL teams operate.
Now, we get a chance to put a spin on how a title rally is scripted. And with one of the most notable blocks of real estate in the world hosting the party, the Aces’ spin on capping a championship will be epic.
Wilson, one of the faces of the franchise, if not the entire WNBA, hinted the celebration would include players water skiing across the Bellagio foundations. She said, “Everybody come to the city!”
That shouldn’t be a problem.
Our love affair with this franchise brought sellout crowds to Michelob Ultra Arena at Mandalay Bay for the playoffs, as the community took great pride in being part of the championship run. The players gave us another reason to be proud to call Las Vegas home, representing our city on a national stage and showing that with hard work and determination anything is possible.
Remember, this is a franchise that lost in the WNBA Finals in 2020 and had a premature playoff exit in 2021. Until this month, they had firmly underachieved.
But, just like all resilient Las Vegans, they got back up and kept fighting. The end result: History.
“Winning a championship is something that no one can ever take from you,” Wilson said while cradling a bottle of champagne in her postgame news conference Sunday after the Aces capped their title run with a 78-71 victory over Connecticut and won the best-of-five series 3-1. “Once you got that down, you are in the books forever.”
This likely won’t be the only time the Aces are champions, as owner Mark Davis’ investment in women’s basketball — making coach Becky Hammon the league’s first coach to earn an annual salary of $1 million and building a ultramodern training center in Henderson — has them positioned as the league’s premiere franchise. They are the New York Yankees or New England Patriots of the WNBA.
For those of us with children, especially with daughters, this investment comes with another significant meaning in giving our children someone to aspire to be. My daughter won’t be as tall as Wilson and her jumper won’t be as smooth as Plum’s, but here’s hoping the passion for her craft — whatever that is — can be just like those of the Aces players.
They showed us a thing or two about what it means to be a Las Vegan. Now, let us all join in the celebration.
