WNBA playoffs 2022 - How Becky Hammon has the Las Vegas Aces on the brink of a championship

A'ja Wilson enters the frame to Gucci Mane's «I Think I Love Her,» dapping up everyone dressed in hoodies and flip flops in the small room. Suddenly the beat drops, the lights switch off, and Wilson's supporting cast — her Las Vegas Aces teammates — start jumping up and down, their phone flashlights illuminating the set like a live concert. Wilson is front and center, lip syncing into a massage gun as microphone. Between the bouncing backup dancers, one can catch a glimpse of Jackie Young as she lays on a massage table, a bit incognito in sunglasses and doing her own thing.

The same crew comes together for another scene, this time for Sydney Colson's rendition into a cupping machine of Lil Boosie's «Set It Off.» They've taken over their athletic trainer's hotel room and need props, after all.

Wilson and her teammates upload these — and other videos of teammates dancing in sync in a hotel hallway during a long break between road games — to TikTok. And the Aces are viral.

But where, one may ask, was head coach Becky Hammon during all this?

«Becky was nowhere near that room,» the coach said, chuckling the next day.

Hammon — in her first year as head coach following a storied playing career in the WNBA and an eight-year stint as an assistant in the NBA — may have been absent for her team's shenanigans. But behind her new-look offense that's taken the league by storm and fresh culture emphasizing effort, accountability and strong relationships, she's left her imprint on an Aces squad that's having more fun than ever on and off the court.

«It's cool, calm, be you,» reserve Riquna Williams said of the culture in Vegas. «It makes it fun when you can just relax and have fun and not have to sink into a shell and hide. This is