The accolades for Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson continue to accumulate after she was one of five players selected for the WNBA’s All-Defensive team.<\/p>\n
Wilson and co-Defensive Player of the Year winner Alanna Smith made the cut, as did MVP runner-up Napheesa Collier, Smith’s teammate on the Minnesota Lynx. The Seattle Storm’s Gabby Williams and Phoenix Mercury’s Alyssa Thomas rounded out the group.<\/p>\n
Wilson and Smith combined for the first split DPOY vote in league history. They were each on 29 ballots, with Williams a distant third on nine votes.<\/p>\n
Wilson overcame the fact the Aces finished eighth in defensive rating (101.9), per WNBA.com<\/a>. She averaged a league-high 2.3 blocks along with 7.9 defensive rebounds per game.<\/p>\n Smith and Collier were key contributors to the WNBA’s best defense. The Lynx were first in defensive rating (97.5) and ranked second in opponent field-goal percentage (42.3). Together, Smith and Collier combined for 2.9 steals and 3.4 blocks per contest.<\/p>\n Williams was a terror on the perimeter. Her 99 steals tied for the second-most in a single season and were only one away from matching Teresa Weatherspoon’s record in 1998.<\/p>\n Thomas was likewise a stifling defender away from the basket, and she helped turn defense into offense. Her 7.2 defensive rebounds per game were the second-most of her career, and the Mercury’s average fast-break points went from 7.3 per game in 2024<\/a> to 11.8 in 2025<\/a>, per WNBA.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The accolades for Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson continue to accumulate after she was one of five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-210253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}