“I don’t think people give Elena enough credit for how much she continues to grow,” Cloud said. “Even from last year to this year, she understood that in order for us to be a championship-caliber team and to run it back and get back to a finals, that she needed to grow as well, not only in her talents, but on the defense end, on the rebounding end, on the assist end. She touches every facet of a box score, and that’s what separates her from the rest.”

What separates the Mystics isn’t just Delle Donne, though, but the growth and development of the entire team.

Toliver came to D.C. in 2017 having already won a championship in Los Angeles, but this season she posted the best assist percentage of her career and her highest true shooting percentage since her rookie year.

Critically, she, too, returned from a bone bruise, getting stronger in each game of the semifinal series with the Aces. By Game 4, she’d ditched the knee brace and played 36 minutes, scoring 20 points, and she created her own shot where few other players would have seen an opening.

“We were just trying to hope we’d get her to 20, 22 minutes early on in the series and get her going,” Thibault said. “But ultimately, I think we all knew that at some point during the series we were going to get her back in the starting lineup. She’s never going to be 100 percent in the series, but we’ll take each increment that we’re getting right now.”

The Mystics have also gotten star turns from players like Emma Meesseman, the 6-foot-4 Belgian who scored 57 points in the first two games of the Las Vegas series without turning the ball over, and Cloud, who took on a larger offensive role with Toliver out.