Kate Martin DESTROYS A’Ja Wilson As Valkyries BLOW OUT Las Vegas Aces – HUGE For Caitlin Clark BFF – The WNBA Las Vegas Aces and A’Ja Wilson just got steamrolled by a whopping 27 points by the Kate Martin and the WNBA Golden State Valkyries. Meanwhile, their once-overlooked rookie Kate Martin is living it up in San Francisco, possibly sipping a smoothie while grinning at the box score. Because not only did her new squad wreck the Aces, but she did it while thriving in her upgraded role.
The lights in San Francisco’s Chase Center blazed like a thousand suns, but nothing shone brighter than the scoreboard: Golden State Valkyries 95, Las Vegas Aces 68. The expansion Valkyries—barely six months old, still learning each other’s names, let alone their playbook—had just delivered a historic, almost unthinkable, 27-point annihilation to the reigning queens of the WNBA. The Aces, the supposed superteam crowned with four Olympians and the indomitable three-time MVP A’ja Wilson, didn’t just lose. They got their entire legacy kicked in, stomped out, and left gasping on the hardwood. This wasn’t just an upset. It was a seismic shift, a basketball earthquake that sent shockwaves through the league and left every analyst, fan, and rival coach scrambling for answers.
How could this happen? How could the mighty Aces, the team that strutted into the 2024 season wearing back-to-back championship rings like they were birthrights, get humiliated by a bunch of upstarts? The answer, as it turned out, was written not just in the box score, but in the very DNA of the team—a DNA that had been quietly, fatally altered by arrogance, mismanagement, and a failure to respect the alchemy of championship chemistry.
It started, as so many tragedies do, with a single, overlooked decision. Last year, when the Aces left rookie Kate Martin unprotected in the expansion draft, nobody in Vegas blinked. The media barely yawned. Even A’ja Wilson, the face of the franchise, dismissed it with her now-infamous “it is what it is,” as if Martin was a forgotten water bottle, not a crucial cog in the machine. But Kate Martin wasn’t just another benchwarmer. She was the glue, the motor, the heartbeat of the Aces’ dynasty dream. She was the one who dove for loose balls, who clapped in huddles when everyone else hung their heads, who rebounded with the ferocity of someone twice her size and twice as hungry. She was, in short, the kind of player you don’t notice until she’s gone—and then you notice everything.
Now, as the final buzzer sounded in San Francisco, Martin was the one grinning at the stat sheet, possibly sipping a smoothie, while her old team collapsed in a heap of missed shots and empty stares. Not only did her new squad wreck the Aces, but Martin herself had more rebounds than A’ja Wilson, more points than Jackie Young and Jewell Loyd combined, and more hustle than the entire Vegas roster put together. Suddenly, the dots were connecting. Maybe Martin had been the secret ingredient all along. Maybe she wasn’t just filling a roster spot—she was energizing the operation, holding the locker room together, sparking the team when things got tight. The Aces hadn’t just lost a player. They’d lost their engine, their backbone, their soul.
But the Aces’ problems ran deeper than a single personnel mistake. This was a team that had started to believe its own hype, to think that trophies were won in the offseason, that plugging in big names would paper over any cracks. When they let Kelsey Plum, their flamethrower, their clutch gene, their emotional spark, walk away to the LA Sparks, they figured they could just replace her with Jewell Loyd, another All-Star, another stat-sheet stuffer. But basketball is not math. It’s chemistry, and the formula was now fatally off.
The Valkyries, meanwhile, played with the reckless, joyful abandon of a group that didn’t know they were supposed to lose. They ran laps around Vegas like it was a practice scrimmage, not a primetime showdown. Every loose ball was theirs. Every hustle play went their way. The sold-out crowd in Golden State roared with every Valkyrie bucket, every Aces turnover, every moment the scoreboard crept further and further into blowout territory. By halftime, Vegas was down by 21. By the fourth quarter, they looked less like defending champions and more like deer in headlights, stunned, shell-shocked, and utterly outclassed.
Coach Becky Hammon, usually the picture of calm, was livid. “I’m not coaching effort,” she declared in the postgame press conference, her voice icy with disgust. “That’s on you.” Translation: this wasn’t a roster issue—this was a locker room crisis. The Aces, once famed for their grit, their togetherness, their willingness to outwork anyone, had become soft, entitled, and mentally fragile. They whined about calls, hung their heads after turnovers, and let the Valkyries punk them in their own house. It was a meltdown of epic proportions, the kind of defeat that doesn’t just end a winning streak—it exposes a rot at the core.
And while the Aces were soul-searching and licking their wounds, their exiled stars were thriving. Kelsey Plum, shipped off to LA, was putting on a clinic. In her Sparks debut, she dropped 37 points—a WNBA record for a season opener—lighting up the court with six threes, eight assists, and a swagger that said, “I’m finally free.” She was the first player in league history to rack up at least 35 points, five dimes, and five steals in a single game. While Vegas was rewriting excuses, Plum was rewriting the record books. She was exactly what the Sparks needed—a leader, a scorer, a playmaker, a culture-changer. And she was loving every minute of it.
The contrast was impossible to ignore. While Plum was flourishing in LA, averaging over 25 points and 5 assists per game, A’ja Wilson was struggling under the weight of expectations. For years, Wilson had basked in the superstar shine, but now, with the supporting cast stripped away, the cracks were starting to show. She’d been held under 20 points in four of the last five games—more than she had in all of last season. Her stat lines looked fine, but the team was 4-3 and reeling from back-to-back humiliations. The vibes were off, the chemistry gone, the dynasty teetering on the edge of collapse.
The basketball gods, with their twisted sense of irony, had one more trick up their sleeve. On June 11th, the Aces would host the Sparks. Kelsey Plum, the player Vegas once labeled a “complementary piece,” was coming back to town—not as a guest, but as a rival star, outplaying, outleading, and outshining the very team that let her go. The first time she returned, Vegas gave her the warm tribute video, the hugs, the standing ovation. Cute. But this time, she was coming for blood, her confidence effortless, her game sharper than ever. “Figuring out DoorDash is harder than basketball,” she joked about life in LA. That’s the energy of a player who knows she made the right move, who’s winning on and off the court.
Meanwhile, back in Vegas, the mood was bleak. The betting markets had moved on. Wilson was no longer the darling of the oddsmakers. The money was pouring in on teams with real balance, deeper benches, and leadership that didn’t crumble under pressure. Teams with, oh, I don’t know—players like Kate Martin and Kelsey Plum. Because those two understood what Vegas had forgotten: basketball is about more than highlights and headlines. It’s about doing the little things, the dirty work, the unseen sacrifices that turn good teams into great ones.
The Aces, for all their star power, had lost their edge. They’d let ego override reality, thinking they could coast on talent alone. They forgot what made them scary in the first place—their cohesion, their hustle, their ability to rely on anyone from one through five to come up clutch. Martin and Plum weren’t just important. They were irreplaceable. And now, as they thrived in new cities, the contrast was impossible to ignore. Wilson, now expected to carry the franchise on her back, looked less like an MVP and more like a solo act, bombing on stage while the rest of the band played sold-out arenas elsewhere.
And the comparisons started rolling in. Some said Wilson was having a “Ronda Rousey moment”—dominant when the competition was weak, but suddenly exposed as the league caught up, as new stars emerged, as the margin for error vanished. It was the most disrespectful thing anyone had ever said about A’ja Wilson, but after the Valkyries loss, it was hard to argue. You don’t get run off your own floor by a brand-new franchise unless something is seriously broken. It was like a rookie chef walking into a Michelin-star kitchen and cooking circles around the head chef. At some point, you have to stop blaming off nights and start questioning the blueprint.
Kate Martin, for her part, wasn’t bitter. She was validated. She always knew that greatness wasn’t just about big names and stat sheets. It was about building something sustainable, something that worked under pressure. She didn’t leave the Aces—the Aces left her. And now, they were discovering what life looked like without their heart and hustle. Spoiler alert: it was ugly. The Aces thought they were giving up expendable players. Turns out, they gave up their very soul.
The league was watching. The fans were watching. The whole WNBA was watching as the so-called dynasty unraveled in real time, getting checkmated by teams they once looked down on. The question wasn’t whether Martin and Plum were better off. That answer was written in the win column, in the smiles, in the stat sheets. The real question was how long the Aces would pretend they hadn’t just made the biggest blunders in franchise history. At this rate, that moment of truth was coming fast, and it might just arrive before the final buzzer sounds this season.
Back in San Francisco, the Valkyries celebrated like they’d just won the championship. Maybe they had, in a way. They’d announced their arrival, shattered the old order, and proved that in this league, nothing is guaranteed. Not even for the Aces.
And as the fans poured out of the arena, as the social media feeds exploded with memes and hot takes, one thing was clear: the balance of power in the WNBA had shifted. The Aces weren’t just beaten. They were exposed, humbled, and left scrambling for answers. The Valkyries, the Sparks, and every other hungry, overlooked team smelled blood in the water.
The empire had fallen. The revolution had begun. And somewhere in LA, Kelsey Plum was smiling, knowing she’d lit the match.
