LAS VEGAS — Two hours before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals tipped, Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon lauded her reserve unit as the “best overall bench we’ve had since I’ve been here.”

Her praise proved prescient. Dana Evans and Jewell Loyd helped the Aces earn a 41-16 edge in bench scoring over the Phoenix Mercury to propel Las Vegas to a series-opening 89-86 victory Friday night.

The backcourt pair — Evans finished with 21 points and Loyd with 18 — became the fifth duo to each score at least 15 points off the bench in the same game in WNBA Finals history.

“We have weapons. We want to use them all because we’re harder to guard that way,” Hammon said. “It was just a really great time for our bench to come up and have a big game … oh my goodness, our bench was huge.”

Every contribution mattered for the Aces, who led for only 5:18 the entire night, mostly in the fourth quarter. Phoenix, fueled by a hot start from Kahleah Copper (19 first-half points), controlled things early and led by as many as nine and then by four heading into the final frame.

Las Vegas stormed back to retake the lead, but Phoenix forward Alyssa Thomas had an opportunity from the charity stripe to put the Mercury, then down one, back ahead with 24.6 seconds remaining. The perennial MVP candidate missed both shots, the first time in WNBA history that a player missed two potential score-tying free throws in the final two minutes of a playoff game, per Elias Sports Bureau.

Trailing by three, Phoenix had another opportunity to tie the score with 13.5 seconds left, but the Aces managed one last stop to pull out the win.

Las Vegas became the second team in WNBA Finals history to win a game with two of its top three scorers coming off the bench, which helped counteract an uncharacteristically quiet shooting night from Jackie Young (10 points, 3-for-13 shooting) and Chelsea Gray (8 points, 2-for-7 shooting).

Even league MVP A’ja Wilson was just 7-for-16 from the floor but still registered 21 points, 10 boards, 5 assists and 0 turnovers for the first 20-10-5-0 stat line in WNBA Finals history.

Ever since the Aces’ rocky 12-13 start to the season, Hammon has been preaching that everyone would need to do their part to come away with the championship. That approach was on display Friday night, when two of the newcomers the Aces traded for this offseason stepped up when it mattered most.

“We’ve got options,” Hammon said. “You know what Jewell’s been, she’s been in this league a long time, but Dana is a little scorer. I mean, she is a problem.”

Evans said Hammon has encouraged her to be more aggressive, adding, “She’s been telling me to shoot the 3 more.”

That was evident Friday, as Evans became the third player off the bench to lead or co-lead a Finals game in scoring. And her five 3-pointers tied Riquna Williams (2019) for the most off the bench in a WNBA Finals game.

“Dana’s our battery,” Wilson said. “She makes us play at a different pace. I told her we go as she goes, and that’s a quick pace, but we’re going to always try to follow her, because we know she’s very hard to stop in this league.”

Still, Hammon is a coach mostly concerned with her team’s defense, and success on that end of the floor was where the Aces really started to dictate the game.

Las Vegas’ late push came largely after it switched to a zone defense midway through the third quarter, with the Aces holding the Mercury to 1-for-8 shooting in the fourth.

“It kind of made us stand a little bit,” Phoenix coach Nate Tibbetts said. “We didn’t handle it well.”

Wilson said the Aces were thrown a bit when Hammon told them they were going to switch to a zone, as it isn’t something they use in games or even practice that often. But the zone ended up slowing a hot Mercury squad that was shooting 52% from the floor and 50% on 3s through the third quarter.

“We were able to kind of play on the string,” Wilson said, “and I think that kind of gave us the momentum to then play out of it.”

Phoenix also lost the turnover battle (14 to 7), with those miscues leading to 20 points for the Aces.

The Mercury once again find themselves down 0-1 in a series, joining the 2002 New York Liberty as the only teams to lose three Game 1s in a single postseason. However, they are 5-0 in all other games. Phoenix hopes that bodes well for the rest of the Finals, the first in league history to feature a best-of-seven format.

“The mindset was back to the drawing board,” Copper said of the lessons from the Mercury’s previous Game 1 losses. “We had the utmost confidence in our locker room and in our coaches to make the adjustments. So now it’s the same thing.”