South Carolina women's basketball: Is A'ja WIlson the best women's basketball player ever?

On Sunday, the WNBA announced A’ja Wilson as the 2025 MVP. As the first four-time MVP in league history, it’s time to start asking if Wilson is the best women’s basketball player ever.

This isn’t a conversation about Wilson being a GOAT. That’s an overused term that gets thrown around any time someone has a couple of good games. There is a legitimate conversation to be had about whether Wilson is truly the best women’s basketball player ever. 

Wilson adds the 2025 MVP to her unanimous 2024 award, as well as the 2020 and 2022 crowns. She broke a tie with Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and Lauren Jackson, the other three-time winners.

Wilson is the first player to win consecutive MVP awards since Cynthia Cooper repeated in 1997 and 1998, the WNBA’s first two seasons. She and Cooper (1997) are the only unanimous MVPs, and it’s hard to make a serious argument against Wilson’s 2024 season being the best season in league history. 

Wilson began this season as the MVP favorite, but by August, she was an afterthought. Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier was the runaway favorite – and deservedly so. But over the last two months of the season, Wilson went on another tear, while Collier was sidelined by an ankle injury and ended up missing a quarter of the season (11 games). 

Wilson finished first in scoring (23.4) and blocks (2.3) average, second in rebounding average(10.2), and third in steals (1.6) average. She also averaged a career-high 3.1 assists and led the league in efficiency rating, besting Collier in nearly every category (Collier had 0.1 more assists).

The race ended up not being close. Wilson finished with 657 total points to beat Collier, who had 534 points. Wilson finished first or second on every ballot and got 51 of a possible 72 first-place votes. Collier had 18.

“This one is different because my name wasn’t even in conversations. Even coming off a unanimous season, it was kind of like, all right, cool. And that’s mind-blowing to me. It seeped in a little bit, to my mindset, I’m not going to lie, in the beginning,” Wilson said on Sunday. “Let me focus on how I can be a better teammate and a leader for this team because that’s what we need. We don’t necessarily need MVP all the time.”

(WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert and Wilson’s boyfriend Bam Adebayo actually presented the award to Wilson on Friday, in front of the entire Aces team and camera crews. Keeping that secret for two days may be the most impressive part of this story.)

Comparing athletes across eras is never an apples-to-apples comparison because of changes in rules, tactics, technologies, and the like. 

It is especially apples to oranges for women’s basketball, since there were two or three generations of American players who never had a domestic league to play in, or were already on the back end of their careers when the WNBA started play in 1997

That being said, Wilson is the only player in WNBA history to average at least 20 points, 10 rebounds, two assists, two blocks, and one steal for an entire season. And she has done it twice.

Wilson has two of the top three scoring seasons and two of the top three rebounding seasons in WNBA history. She also has three of the top five seasons in player efficiency rating.

To be fair, the WNBA season has grown from 28 games in 1997 to 44 games this year. The Cynthia Coopers of history didn’t have a chance to put up similar totals. 

But Wilson’s per-game averages still put her at the top. She holds the single-season (26.9) and career (21.4) scoring average records, along with the single-game record (53). Wilson also has the only 30-point, 20-rebound game in WNBA history and is the career leader in player efficiency.

Dawn Staley was Wilson’s college coach, and the two share a special relationship. They relentlessly needle each other and make good-natured jokes at the other’s expense. But they are also very close, and part of the reason Wilson is the player she is today is because Staley pushed her relentlessly in college.

Staley also happens to be an all-time great player, and she was teammates with Swoopes and Leslie, and played against Jackson. Does she think Wilson is the greatest player ever?

“Ever? I mean, she’s got one more than everybody else, right?” Staley said. “Um. Ever? She’s got an MVP for half of the seasons that she’s been in the league. I don’t think that’s ever been done. She’s the best in the world, for sure. She’s the very best in the world.”

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But I’ve buried the lede.

Wilson is only 29 and has played just eight seasons. She’s only a couple of years into her prime, with four or five more years to go, and she gets better every season (this year, Wilson added a three-point shot and hit 42.4% from behind the arc).

Wilson is third in career 20-point games, less than 100 behind Diana Taurasi despite playing nearly 300 fewer games. She needs 17 more 30-point games to catch Taurasi, again, despite playing nearly 300 fewer games. 

Wilson has the fifth-most career double-doubles, 81 behind Tina Charles’ record, despite playing 200 fewer games. 

Wilson is already top ten in career free throws made, free throws attempted, and blocks. She is top 20 for career rebounds and 21st in career points.

“By the time it’s all said and done, she will be the greatest to ever do it,” Becky Hammon, Wilson’s current coach, told ESPN’s Michael Voepel. “Four [MVPs] already says she is. In a league that has continued to get much better, she keeps getting better. You’re watching poetry in motion. You’re watching history. And she’s just 29 years old. She could win four more of these by the time she is finished.”

It’s also mind-boggling to think that Wilson may be one very suspicious ballot away from having five MVPs and four straight. 

In 2023, Breanna Stewart won a controversial MVP vote. It was controversial because Stewart had fewer first-place votes than Alyssa Thomas and fewer second-place votes than Wilson. But one voter listed Wilson fourth.

It was the only ballot that didn’t have Wilson, Stewart, and Thomas as the top three, and with just 13 points separating the top three, it may have cost Wilson the award. 

Wilson claims to know who the voter was, but he or she has never come forward. Two years later, it looks more than ever like a deliberate attempt by someone to deprive Wilson.

Hypotheticals aside, Wilson still stands alone. She said on Sunday that the reality hasn’t sunk in yet.

“It’s probably not going to hit me until the end of the season, honestly, because I’m thinking about a million things,” she said. “But it is truly a blessing to be able to be where I am. I don’t think I could ever put into words how special this moment is, how special this moment hopefully is for the W moving forward. I was a young girl that didn’t even like this sport. I didn’t want to play it. I don’t like to sweat. But now my name’s in the history books forever. When I’m thinking of those nights and those day when (it’s) 6:00 am in the morning and I’m like “Oh my god, why am I doing this?” This is my why. To sit here today and say I’m the only (four-time MVP). These are the moments that I say this is why you wake up every morning and do what you do.”

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