The Las Vegas Aces will be without forward NaLyssa Smith for the remainder of the season after it was announced that the left leg injury she suffered on Sunday would require a lengthy recovery period.
The team has remained tight lipped on the exact nature of Smith’s ailment, however it appeared to be a non-contact injury which occurred at the 3:15 mark of the third quarter of her team’s game vs. the Toronto Tempo. The 26 year old has started 38 games for the Aces this season, averaging 11.7pts/6.4reb per contest.
It’s a major blow to the defending champions’ hopes to retain their title later this year. Las Vegas currently sits in third place with a 26-13 record on the year. However, the Dream, Fever, Mystics, Wings, and Liberty are all within 3 games of the champs with 5 games left on their schedule.
Luckily for the Aces, they have one of the easiest remaining schedules of the playoff bound teams. They’ll place the last place Storm twice, along with the Tempo, Sparks, and Mercury who make up 3 of the remaining 4 bottom five teams in the standings.
Las Vegas will take on the Tempo at home on Friday before the league pauses its schedule for the FIBA World Cup break. The WNBA schedule will then resume on September 17th, which will leave the Aces with 4 games left before the postseason begins.
In last year’s title run, Smith started 12 games for the Aces, averaging 7.1pts and 5 rebounds per game. While her injury certainly doesn’t prevent Vegas from having a good shot at repeating, it certainly will put added pressure on A’ja Wilson, Jackie Young, and Chelsea Gray to play at an all-world level to power the team forward. With Smith sidelined, the Aces’ margin for error just became that much slimmer as they hope to make it 4 titles in a 5 year span.
Photo: John Mac. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.