LAS VEGAS — Among the many buzzwords Becky Hammon has used during her three-year run as head coach of the Las Vegas Aces, perhaps her favorite is “habits.”

Success relies on building habits.

“You don’t get to flip a switch,” Hammon said. “It’s the beautiful thing about sports, actually. The work and the commitment and the buy-in and the play-hard and want-to and the will, will always show up in the end.”

The Aces simply didn’t have the right habits in 2024. Their defense, which led the league in 2023, was fifth (100.3 points per 100 possessions) at the All-Star break. Their shooting suffered, as their 3-point percentage dipped from 37.2 in 2023 to 34.8 before the Olympics. A team that set the WNBA wins record (34) in 2023 en route to back-to-back titles matched its total losses by the 12th game of 2024.

Las Vegas was without its edge for most of the season, only really discovering that by the final 10 games. At that point, the damage had been done. The Aces had dug themselves too big of a hole, and the rest of the league caught up.

The Liberty loaded up on size to counter Las Vegas’ movement. The Lynx revamped their offense, spreading the floor and increasing their volume of 3s. Connecticut doubled down on its toughness, suffocating opponents defensively. The other contenders were able to hone in on their strengths while the Aces barely saw theirs in action. Their singular greatness never coalesced into more than the sum of its parts. Their players couldn’t amplify one another, simply letting individuals carry the team on alternating nights.

That meant fourth-seeded Las Vegas had to play Seattle, a historically good first-round opponent, before starting the semifinals in Barclays Center, a place where the Aces have won just once in seven tries over the last two years. Whatever edge they had summoned over the final quarter of the season petered out, and they ran out of gas.

“At the end of the day, I thought our shortcomings stood out a little bit,” Hammon said. “We have some great things to build on, (but) you don’t have it every year. It’s not the way this works.”

New York seized upon those weaknesses Sunday night in its decisive 76-62 Game 4 victory. The Liberty pummeled Las Vegas on the glass, winning the rebound battle 55-37, including a 13-4 margin on offensive rebounds. With the Aces trying to protect the rim, New York won the 3-point battle 10-7 (on six fewer attempts) and still managed to outscore Las Vegas in the paint 30-28 with a barrage of fourth-quarter layups.

Thank you @LVAces 🤍🩶♥️ Until next season! 🫶🙏 pic.twitter.com/d6zjfRgzsJ

— Las Vegas Aces News (@LVAcesNews) October 6, 2024

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It was a continuation of shooting woes and defensive issues that have plagued the Aces all season. Despite the hope that they could conjure some of their 2023 magic, they reverted to the habits that had defined them during the regular season, and it wasn’t enough to get the job done. A Game 3 victory, on a night that Hammon called her team’s most complete game of the season, wasn’t a promising sign of what was yet to come for Las Vegas. Rather, it was a blip on the radar, a fleeting reminder of what the Aces had been instead of what they actually were this season.

“This year really kind of set its home for us going into the offseason about how we want to handle things,” A’ja Wilson said.

Las Vegas now heads into a pivotal offseason. It will likely lose one rotation player or young prospect beyond the core four to the expansion draft, whether that is Kiah Stokes, Megan Gustafson, Kierstan Bell or Kate Martin. Kelsey Plum is an unrestricted free agent, though the Aces can core her, but it is the first time that one of the team’s stars has hit free agency without signing an extension.

The bench wasn’t deep enough in 2024. The coaching staff had faith in only three frontcourt players for much of the season, but one of those players is 5-foot-11 and another doesn’t get guarded by opponents in the playoffs. Among their perimeter reserves, Tiffany Hayes was retired to start the season and hasn’t committed to sticking around while Sydney Colson’s offensive limitations made it tough to play her extended minutes.

The Aces also will have to navigate a new league dynamic. The league is stronger and deeper than when Las Vegas won its first title. The Aces helped engineer a stylistic revolution over the past three years, bringing pace and space to the WNBA and opening up the floor for high-powered individual performances. The rest of the league has caught on, however, which means Las Vegas has to figure out what comes next.

“They’ve made us a better team,” New York guard Sabrina Ionescu said. “To do what they’ve done is not easy. We’ve gotten there and lost, they’ve gotten there and won twice, and it’s a testament to their togetherness, their experience, how hard it is that they’re wanting to go out there and be their best every night, and they’ve laid down the foundation. And they’ve continued to motivate everyone in the league to just want to be better and want to win championships.”

Regardless of who ends up on the Aces’ 2025 roster, their only path to get back to competing for titles is to put in the work during the offseason and get in reps that will pay dividends come next October. Wilson said she’ll get back in the lab in December, and Hammon says she expects a different level of focus to start training camp.

Las Vegas also has the motivating factor of defeat.

“We’re gonna have a lot of hard learning lessons,” Hammon said. “It hurts now, I promise you it’s going to hurt tomorrow, probably worse because it sets in the next day, but you got to build habits, you gotta work in a way that you believe you deserve to win.”

The Aces didn’t deserve to win in 2024. They lost to a better team, a team that was more consistent and less complacent throughout the season. For the last few years, Las Vegas has set the pace. Now, there is a new standard to meet.

(Photo of A’ja Wilson and Aces players: Barry Gossage / NBAE via Getty Images)

LANDOVER, Md. — It’s the first week of October and the Browns’ season has ended before the Guardians season.

At 1-4, this is it. It feels like it’s already over, long before the leaves change, before the bye week, before a pumpkin is carved, before the NBA season begins and before the Guardians’ baseball fate has been determined.

Even by Browns standards, this is awfully early for an obituary.

Yet here is where they were laid to rest, a lousy team buried 34-13 in a lousy stadium 12 miles outside of the nation’s capital.

There are fires everywhere and not enough hoses to go around. The defense is a mess. The offense is completely broken, void of any identity and any concept of how to move the ball effectively in this new scheme that the personnel doesn’t fit.

The Browns couldn’t even get lined up properly on either side of the ball, a first-degree coaching felony. They were flagged twice on defense for too many players on the field on the same drive, and the offense couldn’t go for it on fourth-and-goal from the 2 because they had too many players in the huddle. They had to eat a penalty and instead kick a field goal. That’s coaching.

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They couldn’t protect, particularly on the right side of the offensive line. Dawand Jones has been bad all year at right tackle, and Wyatt Teller picked a bad time on the schedule for a knee injury.

Rookie Zak Zinter might eventually be a very good guard in the NFL, but right now he’s a rookie getting chewed up by a rough stretch of excellent NFC East defensive tackles: the Giants’ Dexter Lawrence, the Commanders’ Daron Payne, and next week is the Eagles’ Jalen Carter.

All of that is important context. It isn’t just one player.

And yet something has to change. They can’t go another three months like this or no one will survive.

It’s time. It’s time to end the Deshaun Watson disaster. That’s the only word to describe every part of this transaction. The trade that brought him to Cleveland was a complete failure, the contract an albatross, a choke hold around a franchise that is losing oxygen.

Let me be clear: Watson isn’t the only problem on this team. But he’s definitely not the solution, either. We have enough evidence now.

Watson was a mess against the Washington Commanders: 15-of-28 for 125 yards and a touchdown. He was sacked seven more times and the offense didn’t convert a third down until the fourth quarter.

Stefanksi NOT happy with Watson.

Kudus to him for covering his mouth…handled it pretty well considering all things pic.twitter.com/1lLZJYokIX

— Chase Daniel (@ChaseDaniel) October 6, 2024

In a league of 32 quarterbacks, he’s 33rd in pass EPA (expected points added) per dropback. He’s 28th in passer rating. He has been sacked a league-leading 26 times, nine more than any other quarterback.

Even when he had time on Sunday, he left clean pockets. Jerry Jeudy dropped a touchdown in the end zone, although the game was already decided at that point. I’m trying to be reasonable while also being realistic.

A franchise quarterback is supposed to help an offense and a team overcome some of these obstacles.

Watson is making it worse.

He isn’t helping this offense. He isn’t helping this football team.

Kevin Stefanski, of course, isn’t ready to have this conversation.

“We’re not changing quarterbacks,” Stefanski said after the game.

Even if he wanted to — how could he not at this point? — ownership wouldn’t allow it. The Haslams are still bailing water and paddling furiously on the S.S. Watson, hell-bent on taking it all the way to the bottom of the sea.

We’re nearly there.

Last year showed what Stefanski’s offense can look like with a legitimate quarterback when Joe Flacco resurrected the team. Rather than using that as a blueprint to show Watson how good Stefanski’s offense can look when executed correctly, they instead executed the offense and the offensive coordinator. They broke something that didn’t need fixing to placate their quarterback.

Now the offense is averaging 3.8 yards per play through five games, according to Stathead, the worst for any NFL offense since 2018. This offense is hovering in the neighborhood of the 1999 expansion Browns (3.65). It’s worse than bad. It’s deplorable.

GO DEEPER

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It isn’t all Watson’s fault, but he’s the reason they’re stuck running a system that doesn’t fit any of their skill players and one Stefanski is clearly uncomfortable calling. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how the Browns have some of the slowest receivers in the league who struggle at creating separation. That doesn’t mean you can’t win with them, but it clearly means you can’t win with them playing like this.

Watson has become an infection in the franchise with no known cure. They can’t cut him. They can’t trade him. They refuse to bench him and let him cash his checks in anonymity. So they’ll continue running him out there on Sundays while the rest of the body dies.

The fact this all came against Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels was a bit ironic. Daniels plays exactly like the quarterback the Browns thought they were acquiring in Watson. Daniels is poised, he glides away from pressure. He can roll out of the pocket and throw dimes down the field, as he did on a beautiful 66-yard strike to Terry McLaurin in the first quarter.

Daniels has uplifted a desperate franchise. He has covered the sins of a flawed defense. The Commanders have already matched their win total from last year primarily because their quarterback is playing at an elite level. That’s what the good ones can do.

The Browns don’t have a good one. They have an infection. And the body is slowly dying.

(Photo of Deshaun Watson: Timothy Nwachukwu / Getty Images)