11 months ago, the Las Vegas Aces took home the WNBA championship after defeating the New York Liberty 70-69 to win their 2nd championship in as many years.

Flash Forward to today and the two will meet once again in the playoffs, this time in a best-of-five semi-finals.

The Liberty secured their spot after earning the number one seed and sweeping the Washington Mystics in the first round.

Sabrina Ionescu tied a franchise playoff record with 36 points in New York’s 91-82 series clinching win.

“I felt like New York was injected into me. I was like, we’re winning this,” Ionescu said after the game.

Las Vegas had a much tougher route to get to this point compared to the last few years and even the path that the Liberty took this season.

Vegas finished 4th in the WNBA standings a place in which they haven’t found themselves in recent history.

Despite the unprecedented circumstances, Las Vegas handled the Seattle Storm in the first round, using an 83-76 win to sweep the series.

MVP A’ja Wilson tallied 24 points and 13 rebounds to go along with Kelsey Plum’s 29 points and six rebounds to led the Aces.

Although the Aces will be making a rather familiar trip to Brooklyn to take on the Aces, Plum knows it won’t be a familiar trip.

“New York is a lot better team than they were last year,” Plum said. “They’re bigger, they shoot the ball at a better clip. So credit to them.

They’ve been the best team all year. They played like a team pissed off, with an edge” Aces head coach Becky Hammon said “

And we’ve worked our way there. I feel like we got our edge back probably in the last three to four weeks. I don’t think we’re the same team that New York has seen [this season].”

2024’s Aces/Liberty series will no doubt look a lot different than last year’s finals matchup did so it’ll be interesting to see if New York can book its second consecutive finals trip where they would no doubt be the favriote. Or if Vegas can make it back to the finals to go for a three-peat.