Aces Enter the Offseason Facing a Shake-Up, With Jackie Young's Free Agency the Biggest Question in Las Vegas

By Previously Staff, Previously

October 12, 2026

A semifinal sweep ended the Aces' season on Friday. Now Las Vegas faces an offseason of changes, and everything starts with whether five-time All-Star Jackie Young — a free agent after a career year — stays or goes.

LAS VEGAS

For the Las Vegas Aces, the math of a season has never been complicated: anything short of a championship is a disappointment. That standard is what made the last few years so remarkable, and it is what makes this fall so uncomfortable. Las Vegas was swept out of the semifinals by the Golden State Valkyries, a series that ended Friday, October 9, with an 87-77 overtime loss in Game 3, and now the franchise heads into an offseason where the biggest question in town is not who the Aces might add. It is whether they can keep Jackie Young.

Young, a five-time All-Star guard, is a free agent. She is coming off the best statistical season of her career, and she is doing it at exactly the moment when her value — to Las Vegas, and to every other team that might call — has never been higher. Head coach Becky Hammon has made no secret of where she stands: keeping Young is a big priority for the Aces. Hammon has also been clear-eyed about the other half of that sentence. The decision, ultimately, is Young's.

How the season ended

The semifinal sweep was decisive in the way the scores tell it and closer in the way the games actually felt. Golden State took Game 1, 71-60, and Game 2, 83-81, before closing the series in overtime in Game 3, 87-77. A two-point game and an overtime game in a three-game sweep is a reminder that the distance between Las Vegas and a Finals trip was not enormous — but distance is distance, and the Valkyries are the team moving on. Golden State advances to the WNBA Finals against the Atlanta Dream, while the Aces start an offseason earlier than this core has been accustomed to starting one.

That core is the reason expectations stay so high in Las Vegas. If Young returns, she would rejoin five-time MVP A'ja Wilson and six-time All-Star Chelsea Gray at the heart of a group that has won three of the past four championships. Teams do not normally talk about a shake-up with a nucleus like that still intact. The fact that Las Vegas is talking about adjustments at all tells you how seriously the organization is taking a semifinal exit.

The season Young is taking into free agency

Young's timing, from a negotiating standpoint, could hardly be better. She set career highs across the board this season: 18.9 points per game, 6.8 assists and 4.4 rebounds, while shooting 48.8 percent from the floor and 38.3 percent from three-point range. Those are not just scoring numbers. The assist mark reflects a guard who has become a primary creator, the efficiency reflects a player doing it without forcing the game, and the rebounding reflects the two-way workload she carries on a team that asks a lot of its guards.

Her history in Las Vegas deepens the story. Young was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 draft out of Notre Dame, and she has spent her entire WNBA career with the Aces. EssentiallySports reported that in April she signed a one-year deal worth $1.19 million, described as the league's first seven-figure player contract. However the next contract is structured, a player with her resume — homegrown, in her prime, coming off a career year — is not the kind of free agent a franchise replaces with a single signing if she leaves.

What Hammon and Wilson are saying

Hammon's public posture has been a mix of honesty and respect for the process. Keeping Young is a priority, the decision belongs to Young, and in the meantime the Aces will get to work on everything else. Hammon said the team will make adjustments and moves to address its weaknesses, with defense identified as a top priority, and that work will be done alongside team president and general manager Nikki Fargas. That is an important detail for Aces fans reading the tea leaves: the offseason plan does not start and end with one negotiation. Las Vegas intends to retool the edges of the roster regardless of how the Young talks end.

Wilson, meanwhile, is playing the role only a longtime teammate can play. She has said, in essence, that she is in Young's ear — present, supportive, making her feelings known — while also knowing when her teammate needs space instead of pressure, more of a big-sister presence than a recruiting pitch. Anyone who has watched Wilson lead this team understands that balance is not accidental. She knows the difference between lobbying a free agent and looking after a person, and by her own account she is trying to do the second while quietly accomplishing the first.

Injuries, and the roster questions behind the headline

Hammon also pointed to a factor that shaped the season more than the final series alone suggests: injuries. NaLyssa Smith's season ended early, and Jewell Loyd, Stephanie Talbot and Dana Evans were all limited at various points. A rotation that is constantly being patched is a rotation that struggles to build defensive continuity — which circles back to why defense sits at the top of the offseason list. Some of the Aces' problems in the semifinals may be problems of availability as much as scheme, and a healthier roster next season would change the calculation on its own.

Still, the organization is not using injuries as a shield. The stated plan is changes — adjustments to address weaknesses, pursued by a coach and a front office that have built a champion before and know what one requires. If Young returns, those changes happen around one of the strongest cores in the league. If she does not, the changes become something larger.

If Young leaves, the names already being mentioned

The Associated Press reported that if Young were to leave, Las Vegas could pursue a big name in response, with Indiana's Kelsey Mitchell and Minnesota's Napheesa Collier named as the kind of possibilities that would enter the conversation. That reporting should be read for what it is — reported possibilities, not a done deal, a promise or even a confirmed target list. But it does illustrate the tier of player the Aces would have to chase to replace Young, and how aggressive this front office would be expected to be if the worst-case scenario arrives. You do not replace a career-year, five-time All-Star guard with depth. You replace her with a star, or you change what your team is.

For now, Las Vegas waits on a decision that will shape its winter, its roster and, frankly, the balance of power in the league. Young has spent her whole career as an Ace. She has won here, she has grown here, and she just played the best basketball of her life here. The Aces want her back, their coach has said so plainly, and their best player is making sure she knows it — in her ear, and giving her space, at the same time. The offseason in Las Vegas starts with that conversation, and everything else follows from how it ends.

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