Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson stood atop the WNBA again in 2025, when her team won its third championship in a four-year stretch and the 6-foot-4 basketball sensation won the league’s regular-season MVP award for an unprecedented fourth time.
For that, she was named the AP female athlete of the year for the first time in her career when voting was announced Wednesday.
“It’s an honor when you think about the group of women who have won before,” Wilson, 29, said in a phone interview. “Just to have my name be a part of it, I’m blessed.”
It’s the second consecutive year a basketball player has won the award. Caitlin Clark was honored in 2024, when the Indiana Fever guard completed a record-setting collegiate career at the University of Iowa and became the WNBA’s rookie of the year.
However, Wilson is just the fifth basketball player to be honored as the female honoree since the AP’s award was first presented in 1931, joining Sheryl Swoopes (1993), Rebecca Lobo (1995), Candace Parker (2008, 2021) and Clark. Swoopes and Lobo were honored at the end of their college days — although both later played in the WNBA, which debuted in 1997 — while Parker and Clark were both honored during the year they went from college to the pros.
A group of 47 sports journalists from the AP and its members voted. Wilson received 17 votes, tennis star Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus was second with nine, and Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers was third with five.
Sabalenka, 27, won the U.S. Open, reached the finals at both the Australian Open and the French Open, made the semifinals at the year’s other Grand Slam tournament (Wimbledon) and will finish 2025 atop the WTA Tour rankings. Bueckers, 24, led the University of Connecticut to a record-extending 12th NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament title, was selected No. 1 in the WNBA draft and was voted the league’s rookie of the year.
Wilson’s achievements stood out even among other elite athletes.
“The things she’s done on the court have never been done. To me, she’s in a category all her own,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said. “People always ask, ‘Who’s on your Mount Rushmore?’ I’m saying she’s on Everest — there’s nobody up there with her.”
Major League Baseball player Shohei Ohtani, the standout pitcher and slugger who helped the Los Angeles Dodgers repeat as World Series champions last month, was announced as the male athlete of the year Tuesday. He is a four-time winner of the AP honor.
AP photo by John Locher / Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson runs onto the court before Game 5 of the team’s WNBA semifinal series against the visiting Indiana Fever on Sept. 30.
Hammon has been impressed with everything about Wilson in her four years coaching in Las Vegas.
“Her relatability, her being down to earth makes her a great superstar,” Hammon said. “Her skill set is unmatched, but she’s also the easiest player to coach. To have that mixture of humility, grace and skill, there’s a reason why she’s doing things that have never been done.”
This season was different for Wilson and the Aces, who had cruised to their previous two titles as heavy favorites. This year, with a month to go in the regular season, the Aces were sitting at .500 and were in danger of missing the playoffs coming off a 53-point loss to the Minnesota Lynx, who set a WNBA record for margin of victory on the road.
Wilson rallied her team to wins in the final 16 regular-season games to secure the No. 2 seed, and Las Vegas went on to win the championship.
“This season I found myself through the adversity and mud we went through,” said Wilson, who was voted WNBA Finals MVP, just as she had been in 2023.
Despite her regular-season numbers being on par with her unanimous league MVP season the year before, Wilson heard the chatter that she wasn’t playing as well and that she wasn’t the front-runner to repeat.
Wilson used that as fuel on the court as she led the league with averages of 23.4 points and 2.3 blocks per game. She was also voted the league’s defensive player of the year for the third time.
“The way they talk about us, the way they talk about me, I’m ready for that, I’m ready for the noise,” said Wilson, who led the University of South Carolina to a national championship in 2017 and was the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick and rookie of the year in 2018. “It’s always going to be something.
“If we sit here and try to please everybody, we’re going to go insane. I’m just going to continue to prove why I’m one of the greatest and why my team is part of a dynamic dynasty.”
Wilson raised her game even further in the playoffs, helping the Aces survive decisive winner-take-all games in the quarterfinals and semifinals. She then helped Las Vegas sweep the Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA Finals, hitting the winning shot in Game 3.
“It’s fair to say the expectations for her are so sky high now, she’ll be compared to a degree to the unanimous MVP she was the year before,” said Lobo, now an analyst for ESPN. “Even though she wasn’t unanimous MVP this year, the journey she had this season was different, and she was playing the best basketball of her career in the playoffs.”
“Every year, you wonder how she’ll get better, and she always does.”
Wilson broke a tie for the most WNBA MVP awards with Swoopes, Lauren Jackson and Lisa Leslie, who each won three times. Once again, Wilson has no plans to play in a foreign 5-on-5 league or in Unrivaled, the domestic 3-on-3 league, so presumably the next time she takes the court will be in another WNBA game.
Wilson became a free agent at the end of the season and could be in for a significant raise as the league and the players’ union negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, but she is widely expected to return to the Aces.
She has already crossed one thing off her bucket list by meeting her idol, singer-songwriter Beyonce, who has also acted in film and TV roles and branched out into business via the entertainment and fashion avenues. Wilson crossed paths with the Grammy Award winner at Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix last month.
“It was super cool,” Wilson said. “Beyonce is someone that I’ve always wanted to meet because I just admired her work.”
Wilson is that figure for so many. She launched a shoe and clothing line with Nike, and her sneaker sold out minutes after it went on sale.
“It’s amazing, something that I think about every day when I look around and see people just wearing my shoe,” Wilson said. “Every day it’s a gentle reminder that you know it’s a special moment that we’re living in, and I’m so grateful when I look back on it.”