When the Las Vegas Aces won their third WNBA title in four seasons, the debate Friday immediately turned to whether they had cemented their status as the league’s next dynasty.
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Now it’s time to see where this Aces’ title team ranks among the league’s 29 champions.
It’s not easy an easy task. There was a big gap this season between the 2025 Aces at their worst versus at their best. Perhaps no other team in league history reversed its fortunes so dramatically, going from 14-14 after a 53-point loss on Aug. 2 to completing a 4-0 sweep of the WNBA Finals on Oct. 10.
The Aces ended the regular season on a 16-game winning streak, but their playoff run had its drama. They were nearly upset in the first round, winning the deciding Game 3 by one point against Seattle. They went to overtime in the deciding Game 5 of the semifinals against Indiana. And Games 1 and 3 of the Finals versus Phoenix were decided by a combined five points.
All of that is why the 2025 Aces aren’t in the top 10 like their 2022 and 2023 championship predecessors.
Speaking of which: Among the biggest challenges for assembling this list is ranking champions who are from the same franchise and were made up of mostly the same players. We’ve attempted to split those hairs.
There is more than one way to assess the teams. ESPN’s Michael Voepel ranked the teams based on discussions with coaches and players around the league, plus some old-fashioned subjectivity. ESPN’s Kevin Pelton ranked the champions 1 through 29 using a similar statistical model to the one he developed to determine the NBA’s top teams. Based on the predictive power of point differential, it starts with that mark in the regular season.
Ultimately, being at the bottom in these rankings isn’t that much different from being at the top. They’re all champions.
2023 Las Vegas Aces
Regular season and playoff records: 34-6, 8-1
Defeated the New York Liberty 3-1 in Finals
As good as they were in winning the 2022 championship, the Aces were even better in 2023. They ranked No. 1 in scoring and defense during the regular season and stumbled just once in the playoffs, in Game 3 of the Finals. A’ja Wilson got her first WNBA Finals MVP honor for her performance in 2023; she won again for the 2025 Finals.
In Chelsea Gray, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young, the Aces also had trio of guards who were among the best backcourts in league history.
Candace Parker, a free-agent signee who was expected to be a big part of the Aces’ 2023 title run, was sidelined by foot surgery that July. The Aces also lost starters Gray and Kiah Stokes before Game 4 and still won the title, illustrating how good the chemistry was for the team. The Las Vegas bench — then led by Alysha Clark, Cayla George, Sydney Colson and Kierstan Bell — came through when they were needed most.
