LAS VEGAS — Jewell Loyd doesn’t do starstruck. Never has. Usually, those eyes only widen when the ball is in the Las Vegas Aces guard’s hands, or when she’s locking in on defense. Her demeanor is too chill to gawk. Plus, her mentor was Kobe Bryant. Her friend group includes Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Kyrie Irving. She counts Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart as teammates. Loyd isn’t easily impressed.

But she is curious. Some people — whether entrepreneur or entertainer, activist or athlete — intrigue her enough to study them. How they move. Their process and purpose. When she understands the foundation of their greatness, when she grasps what they put in, that’s when she’s impressed.

Following Las Vegas’ 91-78 win over the Phoenix Mercury on Sunday in Game 2 of the WNBA Finals, Loyd was processing the greatness of A’ja Wilson. Her eyes widened.

“With A’ja, she gives me that same wonder,” said Loyd, who turned 32 on Sunday. “I think it really starts from her heart, man. Everything she does, she does 100 percent. It’s different than any superstar I’ve ever been around. It’s beyond just scoring. It’s her impact. There’s not a lot of players that can produce intimidation. It’s her presence. It’s bigger than anything.”

Eliteness has levels. Wilson’s Game 2 performance — 28 points and 14 rebounds in 32 minutes — illustrated the distance between great and GOAT. The portrait is clear when both are on the same stage.

In a WNBA Finals series full of stars, none match the significance of Wilson. As the series shifts to Phoenix, her dominance looms. Her impact is simultaneously intangible and palpable. The attention she commands, her expertise on defense, the leadership she exudes, they’re at the core of the championship Aces. On top of that, Sunday was a steady flow of midrange jumpers, in-traffic rebounds and altered shots.

In the second quarter, Wilson seized control of the game. She inhaled and vacuumed the spirit out of the Mercury. Then she exhaled and blew Phoenix away, finishing with 13 points and seven rebounds in just over eight minutes. Having properly distorted the Mercury out of shape, Wilson passed the mic to Jackie Young, who exploited Phoenix in the third quarter to end all suspense, scoring 21 of her 32 points in the frame.

Feeling reprieved from surviving a mediocre Game 1, thanks to the off-the-bench heroics of Loyd and Dana Evans, the Aces came into Game 2 with a heightened resolve. Especially Wilson. The two-time champ and four-time MVP senses moments as well as any. Sunday was about reestablishing their championship standard.

In doing so, Phoenix was confronted with a reality that alters their championship hopes. That beating the Aces means besting Wilson. And besting Wilson requires reaching a higher echelon. Sunday was a modern-day legend on a mission to stamp this era as her own and etching an apostrophe on the crown of all-time W supremacy. She’s now two wins away.

“It’s honestly a blessing to play with the best player in the world every day,” Young said. “For her to be able to show up every night, being double and triple-teamed — obviously the focus is on her — and she’s still able to put up these numbers every night.

“She’s the standard.”

The refocusing came early in the second quarter, prompted by a blooper. Kahleah Copper was in a groove, Phoenix led, and Las Vegas was in need of a spark. That’s when Wilson caught a long outlet pass in traffic, snagging it from the Mercury defenders with her suction-cup mitts. She wound up all alone under the rim. But Wilson’s layup went straight up and came straight back down like a failed science project. The traveling violation squandered what should’ve been an easy two.

Wilson bowed her head and wiped her face with both hands, as if to peel off the layer of “mid” that produced the malfunction. She kept her eyes pointed toward the floor and gave her hands a hard clap. Jarring alive the superstar.

“I airballed a layup,” she said during the halftime interview. “So that kind of woke up all the little people in my mind.”

Then she took over. Over the next seven minutes, the tenor of the series would change. Because Wilson simply decided to dominate, to lock in and “be there for my team.” And when she decided, the atmosphere of Michelob Ultra Arena, the momentum of the WNBA Finals, warped to her will.

The next time down, she isolated on Alyssa Thomas in the post. A reverse pivot and power dribble got Wilson to the middle, and she drilled the pull-up 10-footer. Plus the foul.

After blowing up the Thomas-Copper pick-and-roll with a deflection, Wilson went back on the attack on offense. She drilled a baseline jumper over Thomas.

About a minute later, Wilson swallowed up a rebound and, after the outlet pass, hustled down the middle of the floor. She beat DeWanna Bonner to the paint, receiving a pass from Chelsea Gray in stride. Wilson missed the runner, but got the rebound and scored the putback.

The next time down, Wilson pinned Thomas deep in the paint before dropping in a fadeaway.

It was an 11-0 run by Las Vegas that shifted the tide of Game 2, and the series. Wilson scored nine of them.

“You can see it coming,” Loyd said. “It builds and ignites. When we need a bucket. When we need something of impact. That’s the greatness of players. They have a feel for the game. And it’s not doing it for the stats. She’s doing it to get us going. She’s not playing for the stats. She’s playing for the rhythm.”

The WNBA instituting a seven-game finals for the first time ensures Phoenix is still alive in this series. But the Mercury’s chances of winning it looked much grimmer following Game 2. Not just because Wilson dominated, but because she decidedly outplayed Thomas, the Mercury’s best player.

Wilson’s excellence is not just in the gorgeous lefty jumper, or the way she governs the paint. It’s also her commitment to the little things, like running the floor hard and making the right defensive rotation and executing the simple pass. It’s in her conditioning, the fluidity of her footwork, and her instinctual movement into the right spaces.

It’s how she leads with joy and inspiration, balancing her fire-breathing intensity.

“Just remember who you are,” Wilson said, diving into one of her sermons, often aimed at Young. “Remember who you are. Don’t let any basket, don’t let anything shake you from who you are and how far you’ve come and how hard you’ve worked to get to this point.”

Thomas, a finalist for MVP, has been the engine of the Mercury’s resurrection since signing with the Mercury this past offseason. She’s been the maestro of the Mercury offense, responsible for maximizing the matchup nightmares Copper and Satou Sabally can be.

But Wilson is anchoring a defense that is aggressively keying on Thomas. Las Vegas added a zone defense into its game plan, preventing Thomas from losing Wilson on screens. And when Thomas does make her way to the paint, the Aces guards are eagerly helping, digging down with reaches and swipes. Thomas has eight turnovers in two games.

The Mercury offense has had two damning dry spells as a result of Thomas not being able to break down the defense: most of the fourth quarter in Game 1, and a 10-point second quarter in Game 2.

The difficulty Phoenix is having on offense only underscores its struggles on defense. And the Mercury’s primary issue is what to do with Wilson.

“Obviously,” Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts said, “we’d love to keep her on A’ja as much as we can.”

But Thomas was overmatched Sunday against one of the greatest postseason scorers ever. Game 2 was Wilson’s 29th playoff game with at least 20 points, tied with Breanna Stewart for second all time. Wilson is also fourth in playoff free throws made. She is the only player in WNBA history to post at least 20 points and 10 rebounds in consecutive WNBA Finals games. She’s done it twice now.

Defending Wilson put Thomas in foul trouble in Game 2, which was detrimental enough for Tibbetts to rethink whether he can afford to risk keeping Thomas on Wilson.

With just over seven minutes left in the third quarter, Wilson went at Thomas again. Despite having three fouls, Thomas was aggressive. She cut off Wilson’s drive right, then beat her to the spot when she went left. She swiped at Wilson’s dribble, knocking away the ball and getting Wilson on her back foot. Then Wilson re-gathered the ball and launched a fadeaway eight-footer while being smothered by Thomas.

The whistle blew. The rainbow shot splashed. Wilson flexed while yelling. It was a metaphor for Game 2, and perhaps for this series.

“My job is to just make the shots difficult,” Thomas said. “Fouls today were called a lot differently. Just gotta adjust and keep going.”

Somehow, Thomas, Copper and Sabally have to find a way to win four of the next five games. The Mercury’s hopes of a championship require scaling Mt. A’One.

It’s the rarest of air up there. Enough to widen eyes. Even Jewell Loyd’s.