Less than one week after the Olympics, the WNBA playoff chase is on as rivalries have resumed

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Back to your regularly scheduled programming in the WNBA.

Less than one week after 12 of the world’s greatest players came together to win the gold medal for the U.S. Olympic team, it’s back to being “frenemies.”

With a little more than one month left in the season, all 12 members of the national team that held off France 67-66 to win an unprecedented eighth straight gold medal in women’s basketball last Sunday have played at least one game, as the chase for playoff berths has resumed.

“I think that’s the beautiful thing about our league, is we kind of flip that switch in those moments,” Olympic MVP A’ja Wilson said. “We all know what we want to go after now. We checked off the box of the gold medal, now it’s really time to go.”

Wilson and the two-time defending champion Las Vegas Aces tipped off their post-Olympic break Saturday against the league-leading New York Liberty and reigning league MVP Breanna Stewart.

Sabrina Ionescu scored 23 points, Jonquel Jones registered a double-double with 10 points and 17 rebounds and the Liberty clinched a playoff berth with a 79-67 win over the Aces in a highly anticipated matchup many believe could be a preview of the WNBA Finals.

The Liberty (23-4), who lost to the Aces (16-9) in four games in last year’s WNBA Finals, are three games in front of the Connecticut Sun for the overall No. 1 seed.

The Sun opened their post-Olympic break with a 109-91 win over the Dallas Wings on Friday, as DeWanna Bonner scored 29 points and Alyssa Thomas turned in a double-double with 12 points and 14 assists.

Thomas, who made her first trip to the Olympics, said it’s become natural for players to go from teammates to opponents.

“As athletes in general, we’re used to playing on different teams, whether it’s overseas or Olympic teams,” Thomas said. “I just think we all have a lot of experience with adjusting and playing with different people. I think that’s one advantage that we have. It’s no different than going overseas and playing with a completely different group of players.”

Minnesota star and MVP candidate Napheesa Collier, who’s led the Lynx to a 2-0 start since the season resumed Thursday, said there was plenty of fun-loving trash talking in Paris, with players mentioning “little scuffles people got in, or talking about plays people made ... we were talking about Kah (Kahleh Cooper) shooting over us for that freaking (buzzer-beating) shot in Phoenix.”

“I think when you get that many competitive people together, you can’t help but have trash talking,” Collier said. “It’s all really good-natured. We play overseas together, there are trades. The league is so small you get really comfortable with everyone.

“We’re competitive and everyone wants to win and so it’s fun to talk about that and it’s fun to come together and then go back to our other teams and get right back into it.”

For Ionescu, it was her first trip to the Olympics, and as the youngest member of the national team, she took the time to embrace relationships and bonds with players she normally spends five months battling against.

“I think we all got really close,” Ionescu said. “We were together for a month, and I think just to be able to talk about playing one another, funny things that have happened throughout the year. I think it’s just getting to know a lot of the other players, a lot of the other players’ families in that amount of time that you have, kind of build friendships. Understanding we go up against each other every night, but for that month we were all on the same team and it was really cool to kind of just see that camaraderie kind of build.”

That said, the camaraderie was put aside Saturday as the teams quickly returned to their rivalry after public address announcer Chet Buchanan recognized the eight Olympians: Ionescu and Stewart from New York, plus Wilson, Kelsey Plum, Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young, Megan Gustafson (Spain) and Tiffany Hayes (Azerbaijan) from Las Vegas.

Las Vegas built an early 11-point lead and led by four after the first quarter before New York used a 13-2 run to start the second, steal momentum, and take a 42-36 lead into the locker room at halftime. New York kept the sold-out crowd of 10,397 quiet by outscoring the Aces 55-39 with a dominating effort over the final three quarters.

“It’s done, it’s over, it’s behind us — it really does not matter,” Wilson said after the game, about the Olympic break. “We took care of that business, now we’re here. I think our want-to factor wasn’t there for 40 minutes. And that doesn’t matter if we had a break or we didn’t.”