Seattle Storm sweeps Las Vegas Aces to win 2020 WNBA Championship

By Sean Golonka
BU News Service

The Seattle Storm are WNBA champions for the second time in three years after sweeping the Las Vegas Aces in a best of five series.

The Storm closed out the series with a massive 92-59 win in Game 3 that also marked the end of a WNBA season played entirely at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.

Storm player Breanna Stewart was dominant throughout the series. She averaged 28.3 points per game against the Aces and won her second Finals MVP, adding to her extensive list of awards and honors.

Stewart also won a Finals MVP award in her only other WNBA finals series, a sweep of the Washington Mystics in 2018.

“The city of Seattle has always had our back. And even though we had to come to the wubble, we were playing from afar – we had the utmost from everybody, and we’re bringing another one back,” said Stewart after Game 3.

But Stewart was not the only Storm player adding to an already decorated career.

Sue Bird, the oldest player in the league, won her fourth championship in her seventeenth season with the Storm.

When asked how she felt about the difference in her team between her first championship in 2004 and her latest championship in 2020, Bird said about her current teammates: “I don’t ask them how old they were in 2004.”

For the Aces, the 2020 season still marks a bright spot in their history, despite a finals loss that was not particularly close.

Going back to their organization’s days in Salt Lake City and San Antonio, the team has only ever made the finals one other time since the WNBA began in 1997.

The Aces were led to the one seed in the playoffs by 24-year-old MVP A’ja Wilson. Wilson won her first MVP award in the NBA’s shortened season in the “wubble.”

While not as widely publicized as the NBA’s Orlando bubble, the WNBA was also able to carry out a successful and safe season in Florida. Though the WNBA dealt with a few inconclusive tests and false positives, they did not have any players contract coronavirus inside the “wubble.”

There is no news yet whether the WNBA will return to play in a bubble of some kind during the 2021 season.