LAS VEGAS – Throughout the most up-and-down season of her short stint with the Las Vegas Aces, head coach Becky Hammon kept coming back to a simple, common reason for the trouble. On the brink of an early elimination in the WNBA semifinals, she used it again.

The two-time reigning champion Aces missed the lead needed to win again.

“The feeling was different than the jump,” Hammon said after the Aces lost Game 2 in New York. “And this is why three-peat is hard. Let’s be real. The whole league has been pissed off for the last month, and my players are in commercials and this and that, and are crazy celebrities and you get distracted. That’s why it’s difficult. Because human nature is distracting.”

The Aces’ season could come to an end as early as Friday night in Game 3 at Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas. The New York Liberty, who have yet to drop a game to Las Vegas this season, will go for the win in what was expected to be an exciting rematch of the WNBA Finals that would go the full five-game distance.

Hammon, who entered the series as head coach going 18-2 in the playoffs and 2-for-2 in the championships, sees the edge in New York. The Liberty had to watch the rival Aces, playing without two starters, win on their home court in Game 4 last year. They missed a chance in the final seconds to force Game 5.

“I’m sure at the end of the day they feel like something was stolen,” Hammon said after Game 2. The Aces did not hold a practice or speak to the media on Thursday.

Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello, who describes himself as “the glass half full,” has turned that pain into a metaphor about scars healing and making a person stronger. It’s what the Liberty have benefited from all season on their way to the No. 1 ranking the Aces held for two years.

“Becky is out there trying (to figure out) how she’s going to motivate her team,” Brondello said Thursday before the Liberty’s practice in Las Vegas. “But I don’t think we need that motivation because we remember what it feels like. It’s just a reminder(s) that it’s last year. We are a much better team now. Don’t let that feeling weigh you down, use it as motivation and remember what it looks like when we play really well and in the right way.”

The Liberty organization and many of its players are hungrily chasing their first WNBA titles. Jonquel Jones is 0-3 in the final. Sabrina Ionescu, who starred alongside Aces forward A’ja Wilson in a CarMax commercial, never won in college and had her last shot at an NCAA Final Four snatched away by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Betnijah Laney -Hamilton, the Most Improved Player is an often overlooked second-round pick in a league where most never make long careers.

Breanna Stewart, a four-time NCAA champion, won a WNBA title with Seattle in 2018 but didn’t get a chance to repeat that feat when she tore her Achilles tendon overseas the following April. After winning in 2020, the 2021 Storm lost to a great Phoenix team in Brondello’s final season in the desert, when the format was single elimination in the second round.

Trying to repeat in the pros, she said, is different than doing it in college.

“These series are physically tiring, but also mentally,” Stewart said during practice on Thursday. “It’s like a chess match.”

Courtney Vandersloot’s Chicago Sky team won the 2021 title against Phoenix in a rare combination of No. 5 and 6 seeds. The four standout starters, including Vandersloot, re-signed in the offseason to lift the Sky from 2021 underdogs to legitimate title contenders.

“I guess you’re the hunted one, right?” Vandersloot said this during training on Thursday. “The most important thing is that everyone wants to beat you. And I think another hurdle is relying on things that worked last year (and) may not work this year. You feel like you have the answer, the blueprint, because you did it last year and it’s not necessarily the same next year.

The Houston Comets are the only WNBA team with three peats. It was a very different era when they won the first four titles of the competition. It’s been done five times in the NBA by three franchises. The last were the Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O’Neal Los Angeles Lakers in 2000-2002. Three-peats are rare in any professional sport and have been virtually non-existent for the past two decades.

“That’s what great teams do: being able to repeat or win multiple times, and finding the thing that works best the next time,” Vandersloot said.

Aces point guard Chelsea Gray understood this in the preseason.

“No two years have ever been the same in terms of winning a championship, so you start creating those habits since Day 1 of training camp,” Gray said on a video call in May. “And I think the rest will take care of itself. You just take it day by day and don’t look too far ahead.”

After losing Game 2, Gray described edge as the way they dive to the ground, box well enough so the opponent doesn’t touch the ball, show swagger after knocking down a shot and provide all-around energy. Yes, she thinks it can be locked up midway through the playoffs.

The time to find that is dwindling, otherwise it will be early in the offseason for the first time in Hammon’s tenure.