Content note for discussion of domestic violence.

The Las Vegas Aces won the WNBA Championship last week, the first team to go back-to-back since the Los Angeles Sparks did it 21 years ago. They'd been hailed as a "super team" all season and the only team people thought might give them a challenge for the championship was the New York Liberty. However, the Aces dominated the Liberty in the first two games of the Finals and it really wasn't even close.

In Game 3, Las Vegas's star point guard Chelsea Gray was injured and after the game, it turned out that starting center Kiah Stokes was, too. Much had been made all season about how shallow Vegas's bench was. Gray was a huge part of the Aces' offense—over 30% of their offense was generated by or through her. Stokes was a huge part of their defense, not necessarily putting up big numbers on the stat sheet but having a huge impact on the game itself. Were these injuries a chance for the Liberty to beat the mighty Aces squad?

No, it turned out. The Aces came through, with bench players like Cayla George entering the starting lineup and showing out. Syd Colson came off the bench to disrupt the crap out of the Liberty's offense. They won the championship and they deserved to win, and it was an emotional win for the team because they'd done it without their floor general leading the way. I tend not to root for the Aces as a franchise because it feels a bit like rooting for the Yankees, but I can also recognize when a team deserves to win and the Aces—injured or not—were the best team all season.

Those last-minute injuries were not the only adversity the Vegas team faced this season, though. And after their win, Kelsey Plum took to Twitter to remind fans what her team had been through, only to defiantly come out on top.

"HURT, ARRESTED, SUED...CHAMPIONS," she wrote.

She was doubling down on an interview she had given ESPN's Holly Rowe the day before the Aces clinched the title with a one-point victory in Game 4.

"This team has responded all year," she told Rowe. "We've been through a lot. I mean, shoot, we've been hurt, sued, arrested, you name it, we've done it. So I'm confident in our group."

But wait... one of these things is not like the others and it's incredibly insensitive to put them in the same breath. In addition to the very-late-season injuries to Gray and Stokes, star acquisition Candace Parker went down mid-season with a foot injury. The team struggled for the first time all season after she went out, needing to adjust to not having her presence on the court (I'm using that term loosely; they lost very few games all season, but they lost a couple right after Parker was hurt). But they did adjust and kept right on trucking. No doubt that was a blow to the team to lose Parker on the court.

The other two things that Plum mentions, however, are very serious. And while they are not the fault of the players on the court, to throw them back at people who may have doubted them minimizes the reality of what they are and the fact that very real people—real women, specifically—were hurt.

Let's start with the arrest. Shooting guard Riquna Williams was arrested in July on domestic violence charges against her wife. She had been out all season with a back injury but had been on the roster. Charges were dropped right before the playoffs began after Williams's wife stopped cooperating with prosecutors, but the charges were incredibly serious.

Williams was facing five felony charges, including domestic battery by strangulation, coercion by force and assault with a weapon, and four misdemeanor domestic battery allegations. Before the charges were dropped, Williams was on house arrest and GPS monitoring, as well as banned from traveling or using alcohol.

It's worth noting that this was not Williams's first domestic violence arrest, either. She was suspended for 10 games in 2019 while playing for the Sparks after she was arrested and charged with two felony counts, one involving the assault of an intimate partner and the other involving a threat to another person with a firearm. She pleaded not guilty and those charges were eventually dismissed.

Following her arrest, the Aces released a statement saying that Williams was barred from team activities and that ban remained in place even after the charges were dropped. But no individual players, that I can find, made statements condemning the charges or expressing compassion for the victim. There was a vague mention of "thoughts being with the impacted parties" in the team statement. I do not doubt that Williams's situation was stressful for her teammates and it had an impact in the locker room, though we know it wouldn't have impacted on-court play as Williams had been benched due to an injury all season.

The Aces players themselves, though, were not the primary victims of Williams's arrest. That was her wife, who had to move to another state to get safety and distance from Williams.

Now let's look at the third obstacle that Plum cited as something the Aces team had overcome on their path to a championship: "sued." She is talking about former Ace Dearica Hamby, two-time Sixth Player of the Year while with the team, who sued the Aces for pregnancy discrimination. Hamby alleges that she was traded to the Sparks in retaliation for getting pregnant. Prior to the start of the season, the WNBA announced that Aces head coach Becky Hammon would be suspended for two games for violating the league's "respect in the workplace" policies.

In a lawsuit filed to the Nevada Equal Rights Commission and the EEOC on September 22, more details of the case were made available to the public.

On January 17, 2023, I received a call from Hammon during which she told that my "time with the Aces is up" and I was being traded and that it was best for my career. She told me, "I can send you somewhere like Connecticut or Indiana, or you can pick a place, like Los Angeles." During this conversation, I stated twice to Hammon, "you're trading me because I am pregnant?" Hammon responded, "what do you want me to do?"

Other allegations against Hammon and the Aces in the lawsuit include the team trying to access her OB/GYN records even after she had been traded, accusing Hamby of not being committed to the team, and Hammon allegedly telling Hamby that she doubted she would be ready to play in the 2023 season and "wasn't holding up her end of the bargain."

These allegations were credible and substantiated enough for the WNBA to issue a suspension to Hammon after their investigation. Again, I have no doubt that having your head coach suspended to start your season had a challenging impact in the Aces locker room. But again, the primary victim in this case is not the players on the Aces team. It's a former teammate and fellow WNBA player who faced pregnancy-based discrimination (and it's worth noting that she is not the only WNBA player to accuse her team of this kind of discrimination this season).

I think it is commendable that the Aces were able to come together as a team and overcome the many obstacles—both direct and indirect—that the team faced this season. It speaks to the bond that these players have with each other, to their skill as athletes, to the way they support each other both on and off the court. I don't want to minimize that in any way, and I believe that is probably what Plum meant when she gave that comment.

But the reality is that some of the challenges that presented themselves were the result of real-world harm, violence, discrimination—oppression that was faced by women, at the hands of women. It's clear that men are not the only people who can perpetrate abuse and discrimination, that women can also be tools of the patriarchy and enact the harmful beliefs and behaviors they have learned from the world around them.

Hammon has spent her career coaching in a men's league and playing for coaches who often replicate the coaching attitudes and tools that were designed for the men's game and the culture of men's sports. One look at the abuse scandal in the NWSL shows what happens when you uncritically replicate systems built for men and apply them to women. (I've written about this idea before as it pertains to Title IX if you want to read more).

Regardless of Plum's intentions, it's never a good look to minimize other women's pain or trauma to build up your own accomplishments—especially when we are talking real harm done versus winning a sports championship. Do the ends justify the means? Is it worth the bodies that lay in the wake of a victory?

You tell me.

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