A’ja Wilson stood atop the WNBA again in 2025, winning an unprecedented\u00a0fourth MVP\u00a0as her Las Vegas Aces earned a third championship in four seasons.<\/p>\n
For that, she earned The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year on Wednesday for the first time in her career. It’s the second consecutive year a basketball player won the award after Caitlin Clark was honoured\u00a0in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honour when you think about the group of women who have won before,\u201d Wilson said in a phone interview. \u201cJust to have my name be a part of it, I\u2019m blessed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson is only the fifth basketball player to be honoured as the Female Athlete of the Year since it was first presented in 1931, joining Sheryl Swoopes (1993), Rebecca Lobo (1995), Candace Parker (2008, 2021) and Clark.<\/p>\n
A group of 47 sports journalists from the AP and its members voted. Wilson received 17 votes, tennis star Aryna Sabalenka was second with nine and Paige Bueckers was third with five.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe things she\u2019s done on the court have never been done. To me, she\u2019s in a category all her own,\u201d Aces coach Becky Hammon said of Wilson. \u201cPeople always ask who\u2019s on your Mount Rushmore? I\u2019m saying she\u2019s on Everest \u2014 there\u2019s nobody up there with her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shohei Ohtani\u00a0won the AP Male Athlete of the Year on Tuesday for the fourth time.<\/p>\n
Hammon has been impressed with everything about Wilson in her four years coaching in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer relatability, her being down to earth makes her a great superstar,” Hammon said. “Her skill set is unmatched, but she\u2019s also the easiest player to coach. To have that mixture of humility, grace and skill, there\u2019s a reason why she\u2019s doing things that have never been done.”<\/p>\n
This season was different for Wilson and the Aces, who had cruised to their previous two titles as a heavy favorite. This year, with a month to go, the Aces were sitting at .500 and were in danger of missing the playoffs after coming off a record 53-point loss against Minnesota.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis season I found myself through the adversity and mud we went through,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Despite her numbers being on par with her unanimous 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 as the league’s top player.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old used that as fuel on the court. She led the league with 23.4 points and 2.3 blocks per game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way they talk about us, the way they talk about me, I’m ready for that, I’m ready for the noise,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cIt’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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 Phoenix in the WNBA Finals, hitting the winning shot in Game 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fair to say the expectations for her are so sky high now, she\u2019ll be compared to a degree to the unanimous MVP she was the year before,\u201d ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo said. \u201cEven though she wasn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year, you wonder how she\u2019ll get better, and she always does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson became the first player in either the WNBA or NBA to win the MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Finals MVP and lead the league in scoring in the same season.<\/p>\n
Wilson broke a tie with Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson, who all won the WNBA MVP three times. She plans to have another relaxing off-season as she won\u2019t play overseas or in Unrivaled, the domestic 3-on-3 league.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s already crossed one thing off her bucket list, meeting her idol Beyonce at the Formula 1 race in Las Vegas last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was super cool, Beyonce is someone that I\u2019ve always wanted to meet because I just admired her work,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
The Aces great is that way herself for so many. She launched a shoe and clothing line with Nike. Her shoe sold out minutes after it went on sale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s amazing, something that I think about every day when I look around and see people just wearing my shoe. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A’ja Wilson stood atop the WNBA again in 2025, winning an unprecedented\u00a0fourth MVP\u00a0as her Las Vegas Aces earned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-336884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}