{"id":35227,"date":"2026-08-09T21:51:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T16:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=35227"},"modified":"2026-08-09T21:51:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T16:51:04","slug":"aces-rest-aja-wilson-chelsea-gray-and-jackie-young-after-brutal-back-to-back-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=35227","title":{"rendered":"Aces rest A\u2019ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young after brutal back-to-back travel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/twt-thumbs.washtimes.com\/media\/image\/2026\/08\/09\/Aces_Lynx_Basketball_35257_s1440x960.jpg?f72536d07237fdd262042ae8f5e6e6de3b865f3c\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>NEW YORK \u2014 A\u2019ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young all missed Las Vegas\u2019 game against the New York Liberty to rest on Sunday, when the team was playing the second half of a difficult back-to-back.<\/p>\n<p>The Aces lost in Minnesota on Saturday in a nationally televised game and didn\u2019t arrive at their hotel in New York until nearly 10 p.m. after making the almost 1,200-mile trek from Minneapolis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean, everybody has a brutal schedule at some point. I don\u2019t even think they do this in the NBA, though, where it\u2019s less than 24 hours,\u201d Aces coach Becky Hammon said. \u201cYou can check, but I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s not even legal on the NBA side, you\u2019d have to look up. But I don\u2019t recall. With the time change, it ends up being that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The NBA has frequent back-to-backs as well.<\/p>\n<p>Las Vegas\u2019 trip is among the worst a team could have as far as back-to-backs goes. The league won\u2019t make teams travel two times zones or have less than 22 hours between games if it\u2019s playing consecutive days, according to a person familiar with scheduling. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity earlier this week because they weren\u2019t authorized to speak publicly about it.<\/p>\n<p>Hammon said the No. 1 priority for her and the Aces is the players\u2019 health.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to always be on the side of health and safety for our players,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to put them in any kind of jeopardy to get hurt when we\u2019ve been expending a lot of energy on travel and a lot of miles back and forth crisscrossing the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s game against the Liberty was on ABC and had a 12:30 p.m. EDT tipoff because the network was showing the Little League Softball World Series championship game afterward.<\/p>\n<p>The early tipoff meant an early wake up and arriving at the arena less than 12 hours after the Aces got to their hotel.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s contest caps a five-game road trip for the Aces that started last Saturday in Chicago. The Aces lost that game and then went on to rout Atlanta. A stop in Indiana on Thursday ended with an overtime victory by Las Vegas thanks to buzzer-beating 3-pointers by Gray at the end of regulation and overtime.<\/p>\n<p>Even without Las Vegas\u2019 top three players, Liberty coach Chris DeMarco wasn\u2019t going to take the Aces lightly.<\/p>\n<p>                        <a name=\"pagebreak\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t go in this game and think they\u2019re not going to be like, oh, there\u2019s 60 points missing. It\u2019s my turn to get to work, so it\u2019s dangerous,\u201d DeMarco said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"permission\" style=\"padding-top: 25px;\">\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 The Washington Times, LLC.\n                        <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK \u2014 A\u2019ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young all missed Las Vegas\u2019 game against the New York Liberty to rest on Sunday, when the team was playing the second half of a difficult back-to-back. The Aces lost in Minnesota on Saturday in a nationally televised game and didn\u2019t arrive at their hotel in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/twt-thumbs.washtimes.com\/media\/image\/2026\/08\/09\/Aces_Lynx_Basketball_19551_c0-177-4246-2653_s1200x700.jpg?bb8566a5be87e582d10af28174145ae04f28daf3","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-hub"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}