PHOENIX — Mark Davis, unlike his famous father, hasn’t had much success as a pro football owner. His Las Vegas Raiders have only made the NFL playoffs twice since Al Davis died in 2011 and Mark inherited primary control of the team.
But the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces have excelled with Davis as the owner.
The Aces won their third title in the last four seasons under Davis’ ownership with a 97-86 victory over the Phoenix Mercury on Friday night before another sellout crowd of 17,071 at Phoenix’s Mortgage Matchup Center, sweeping the best-of-seven series. Each player on the Aces will get $22,908 in prize bonuses—roughly $25,000 more as a team compared to 2024—while the Mercury receive $8,521 each, up from $7,746.
“I don’t how to put this into perspective from an historic basis, but there will be plenty of stories written about it,” Davis said after a raucous celebration at center court.
The game wasn’t as close as the final score indicates. The Aces ran out to a 20-point lead with 8:41 left in the third quarter. The Mercury made another spirited comeback, similar to Game 3, after Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts was hit with a double technical and ejected for arguing with the refs, but the team couldn’t draw any closer than six. A’ja Wilson, who was named Finals MVP, again led all scorers with 31 points.
Are the Aces a dynasty?
“Putting titles on wins is up to you guys to do,” Davis said. “I don’t think it’s for me because I’m too close to it. But what they’ve accomplished in winning three titles in four years is truly amazing. As I asked them just a while ago, can you do it again?”
That’s reminiscent of his father, Al, who inadvertently coined the term, “Just win, baby,” in the aftermath of his Los Angeles Raiders winning the 1984 Super Bowl, their third such victory in less than a decade for the franchise.
The elder Davis died almost exactly 14 years ago on Oct. 8, 2011, and his son inherited the Raiders. He then led the wave of professional sports growth in Nevada by moving the football team from Oakland to Las Vegas after other stadium plans fell apart, and he led the building of the new Allegiant Stadium in 2020. The Raiders have only made the playoffs twice since appearing in the Super Bowl for the last time, a loss in the 2003 Super Bowl to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This season, the Raiders are currently 1-4.
The Aces, with their undeniable success, have been the antithesis to the Raiders.
The WNBA franchise moved from San Antonio to Las Vegas in 2018, and Davis purchased them from MGM Resorts International in 2021. At the time, Davis pledged to invest in the franchise by paying the players enough money so they wouldn’t have to play the offseason in Europe. He also drew head coach Becky Hammon from the NBA, where she was an assistant in San Antonio under Gregg Popovich.
He said his WNBA investment was “not a lark or a charity project.” He wanted to elevate the team and the league, and he was “willing to invest the money to do it.”
Like Mat Ishbia has done in Phoenix since buying the Mercury and Suns almost three years ago, Davis built a state-of-the-art practice facility and urged the other WNBA owners “to step up their games.” The Mercury were in the Finals for the fifth time and have also won three WNBA titles.
“It’s one thing to build a team that can win one title,” Davis said back then. “But quite another to build an organization that can do it year in and year out.”
Hammon took over in 2022, leading the Aces to back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023. The team lost in the semifinals to the eventual champion New York Liberty in 2024.
With the current collective bargaining agreement ending on Oct. 31 and a lockout pending, Davis said he was concerned about upcoming negotiations.
“The last time I spoke about things like that, I got fined,” Davis said. “I think they’ll work it out somehow, I hope. I think you know what side I’ll be sitting on. We’ll get it right.”
The Aces success punctuates how sports have arrived in Vegas, with the Stanley Cup-winning success of the Golden Knights and imminent arrival of Major League Baseball’s Athletics. The A’s are in the process of constructing a $2 billion domed stadium on the Strip just miles from Davis’ publicly funded football palace, which also cost close to $2 billion. The A’s, who currently call a minor-league park in West Sacramento, Calif. home, are slated to arrive in Vegas by 2028.
Basketball-wise, the NBA is still talking about expanding to Vegas. The league is about to stage the finals of their Emirates NBA Cup in-season tournament this December for the third consecutive season at T-Mobile Arena.
Asked if basketball had finally arrived in Vegas, Davis said the sport had buried its anchor in the Nevada desert years ago.
“I think it always has been [successful in Vegas],” Davis said. “I remember back in the days when I was living in the [San Francisco] Bay Area with UNLV and Jerry Tarkanian. That team captured the imagination of the country. Basketball, with the summer league there, it holds its own. It’s a great basketball market.”
And the Aces are leading the way.
