NEW YORK – To avoid ending their championship three-peat quest, the Las Vegas Aces know they will have to do something no WNBA team has ever done before: rally from an 0-2 deficit in a best-of-five series.

The two-time defending champions lost Game 2 of their semifinal series against New York 88-84 on Tuesday, meaning the rest of their games are a must-win. Starting Friday in Las Vegas.

“I like being in the history books, so I might as well try to start there,” Aces guard Chelsea Gray said. “That will be our mentality.”

The Barclays Center crowd of 14,321, including such luminaries as Alicia Keys, Carmelo Anthony and Gayle King, celebrated Liberty’s victory, which gave New York a commanding two-game lead in the series. But another spectator who received a big ovation from the crowd, former Liberty guard Teresa Weatherspoon, knows from experience that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Weatherspoon, recently fired after just one season as head coach of the Chicago Sky, is one of the most respected players in Liberty history. She played for New York in four title chases from 1997 to 2002. The Liberty lost them all: the first in a championship game in the league’s inaugural season and the other three in series. Then New York fell again in the WNBA Finals last year.

“It’s great to be up 2-0, but we didn’t win anything,” New York guard Sabrina Ionescu said. “We did what we had to do: protect the home field.”

The No. 4 seed Aces, meanwhile, didn’t do what they hoped. Coach Becky Hammon said she tried to avoid calling timeouts during parts of the game because she didn’t want to yell at her team in frustration. But a few times she did.

“I’m not mad at the officials, I’m not mad at the New York Liberty,” said Hammon, who guided the Aces to two titles in her first two seasons as head coach. “I’m mad at us because of the number of layups we’re giving up. It was one thing in the first game, one thing in the second game. And if it’s going to be something in the third game, then we’re not going to win .They are too good.

“Last year we were the best team. They’ve been the best team this year. Because of their habits, their edge they’ve had all year, their incredible attention to detail. Frankly, we don’t have the edge. Now, we have found last month. But the feeling was different than the jump (of this series).

“This is why three-peating is hard. The whole league has been pissed off for the last eight months – my players are in commercials and this and that. And they’re celebrities. And you get distracted. That’s why it’s hard. Human nature distracting.”

Conversely, Hammon knows how hungry New York is to win the franchise’s first title. The Liberty have now won five straight games (including the regular season) against the Aces.

Ionescu, New York’s No. 1 pick in 2020, had 24 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists on Tuesday. That followed her Game 1 performance of 21 points and 5 assists on Sunday.

“We had a plan in Game 1 that we didn’t execute,” Hammon said of trying to guard Ionescu. “And tonight I just felt like we weren’t keeping her in front of us as well as we probably could have.”

One of Hammon’s other major concerns was turnover. The Aces had twelve, which isn’t that bad total, but they all hurt. Especially the last one: With 10.1 seconds left and the Aces trailing by two, Gray’s inbound pass bounced off teammate Kelsey Plum. It was originally called the Aces ball, but was destroyed upon review when New York challenged it.

Las Vegas was then forced to foul, with Ionescu making two free throws and Breanna Stewart making two more to seal the victory.

“The turnovers really hurt in the first half,” Gray said of the 11 goals in the first 20 minutes. “If we change a few of those possessions, it’s going to be a different game going into halftime and we’re not climbing out of a hole.”

The hole the Aces now find themselves in is discouraging. WNBA teams with 2-0 leads in best-of-five series are 18-0. No defending champion has previously trailed 0-2. Four defending champions have been swept in the past, but those were in best-of-three series.

“It starts from the beginning with our mentality,” Gray said of how the Aces can come back. “Because I’m the aggressor on both ends of the floor. I thought there were a lot more glimpses of that tonight… the first game we didn’t have it at all. But it’s going to take a full 40 to be able to get it done.”

And the Aces will have to do that three times in a row or New York will go to the WNBA Finals.