Las Vegas Aces win 17th in row, top Seattle Storm in Game 1 - ESPN

LAS VEGAS — The Las Vegas Aces won their 17th consecutive game Sunday, as they opened their WNBA playoff run with a 102-77 decision over the Seattle Storm. One more victory will tie the 24-year-old league record and put Las Vegas into the WNBA semifinals for the seventh season in a row. But it's another number that means the most to the Aces now.

«It's the first to nine wins, so that's how we want to approach it,» Aces coach Becky Hammon said of what it will take to give Las Vegas its third WNBA championship.

And Aces star A'ja Wilson said of the streak, «You guys celebrate this more than we do. The streak stopped in the regular season.»

It didn't really, but in Wilson's mind the streak is of limited importance now. Something perhaps for the history books, and she's too busy dominating the present to think about that. The record of 18 straight win was set by the 2001 Los Angeles Sparks, who won the WNBA title that year and were led by Lisa Leslie.

Leslie is one of four players to win the WNBA MVP three times, along with two other retired Hall of Famers, Sheryl Swoopes and Lauren Jackson, plus Wilson, who just turned 29 in August. She could win MVP No. 4 this season. Sunday, she had 29 points, 8 rebounds, 3 steals, 2 assists and 2 blocks.

It was Wilson's 11th consecutive playoff game with at least 15 points and 5 rebounds, tying Leslie for the second-longest such streak in league history, according to ESPN Research.

Wilson also moved into 10th place on the WNBA's career playoff scoring list. She now has 878 points in 44 postseason games. She could pass Hall of Famer Seimone Augustus (901 points) in the Game 2 of this best-of-three series Tuesday in Seattle (ESPN, 9:30 p.m. ET).

Wilson was top-notch Sunday, but so was the