{"id":339391,"date":"2025-12-09T17:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T17:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/339391\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T17:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T17:45:07","slug":"las-vegas-aces-star-aja-wilson-named-times-2025-athlete-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/339391\/","title":{"rendered":"Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson named TIME’s 2025 Athlete of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

A\u2019ja Wilson praises Becky Hammon after winning third title with Aces<\/p>\n

A\u2019ja Wilson gave Becky Hammon her flowers after the Las Vegas Aces clinched their third championship together.<\/p>\n

Las Vegas Aces superstar A’ja Wilson<\/a> is TIME’s Athlete of the Year, because, of course, she is.<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-4 South Carolina native earned her second WNBA scoring title, third Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) award<\/a> and fourth MVP<\/a> (the first in league history to accomplish the feat) weeks before winning her third championship. The now two-time Finals MVP<\/a> and the Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury<\/a> in the WNBA Finals.<\/p>\n

Wilson is the first player in WNBA or NBA history to win a championship, Finals MVP, regular-season MVP and DPOY award in the same season. She\u2019s also one of four players in the WNBA or NBA to win four MVP trophies before the age of 30. Fittingly, Wilson wore a Thanos-inspired glove<\/a> to Las Vegas’ championship parade earlier this year to celebrate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019ve collected everything, that\u2019s Thanos,\u201d Wilson told TIME<\/a>. \u201cAnd this year, I collected everything. I don\u2019t really talk much s—, I mean crap. I kind of let my game do it. This was my biggest moment of doing it, because no one\u2019s ever done what I\u2019ve done. And I think people really needed to understand that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wilson was part of several TIME honorees for 2025, including KPop Demon Hunters as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year, YouTube\u2019s Neal Mohan as the CEO of the Year and Leonardo DiCaprio as the Entertainer of the Year.<\/p>\n

Her ascension to the greatest year in her career did not come without some struggles<\/a>. At the midway point of the WNBA season, the Aces were sitting at .500 and were on the receiving end of a 50-plus blowout loss to the Minnesota Lynx.<\/p>\n

Then, a switch flipped. Las Vegas rattled off 16 straight wins to get to the postseason, and endured back-to-back playoff series that required the team to play every game possible (three against the Seattle Storm<\/a> and five against the Indiana Fever) before getting to the Finals.\u201cSometimes you\u2019ve just got to get knocked down to get built back up,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cI think 2025 was a wake-up call that I needed, to let me know that I can\u2019t be satisfied with anything. There\u2019s somebody out there that\u2019s going to try to take your job. You need to make sure you\u2019re great at it, every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson further cemented her legacy and perhaps her TIME Athlete of the Year award when she hit a game-winning shot<\/a> against the Mercury during Game 3 of the WNBA Finals. The shot, released with a fitting 2.2 seconds left on the clock (a subtle ode to her No. 22 jersey), cemented the series for the Aces and catapulted Wilson into the conversations for the WNBA’s greatest player of all time. Still, the WNBA star wouldn’t quite put herself in that category just yet. That said, she believes that she’s making it hard for people to chase after her.<\/p>\n

“When you think about a lot of GOATs, they have those career-defining shots that solidify you as the best\u2026”, she said. “I didn\u2019t really have one of those. I had championships, yeah. But it was never really like a moment of like, ‘Whoooooooo. That\u2019s why she is who she is. She\u2019s exactly who she thinks she is.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A\u2019ja Wilson praises Becky Hammon after winning third title with Aces A\u2019ja Wilson gave Becky Hammon her flowers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[152279,650,646,13716,228,402,236,13721,50624,88,4129,2652,2839,34089,4677,37750,2942,3729,13723,28490,4232,6429,1077,6377,8456,355,13547,3,13470,13560,18740,5551,1839,4676,99,2415,4388,13692,7633,19185,434,48871,1765],"class_list":["post-339391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-aja","tag-aja-wilson","tag-aces","tag-affiliate","tag-arts","tag-basketball","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrities-u0026-entertainment-news","tag-dicaprio","tag-entertainment","tag-fever","tag-indiana","tag-indiana-fever","tag-las","tag-las-vegas-aces","tag-leonardo","tag-leonardo-dicaprio","tag-local","tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","tag-lynx","tag-mercury","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-lynx","tag-national","tag-national-sports","tag-nba","tag-neutral","tag-news","tag-overall","tag-overall-neutral","tag-phoenix","tag-phoenix-mercury","tag-seattle","tag-seattle-storm","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-storm","tag-u0026","tag-vegas","tag-wilson","tag-wnba","tag-womens","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339391","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=339391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}