{"id":484707,"date":"2026-02-23T00:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T00:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/484707\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T00:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T00:12:14","slug":"aja-wilson-named-ap-female-athlete-of-the-year-after-historic-wnba-season-with-aces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/484707\/","title":{"rendered":"A’ja Wilson Named AP Female Athlete of the Year After Historic WNBA Season with Aces"},"content":{"rendered":"

The accolades continue to pile up for Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press named the 6’4″ center its Female Athlete of the Year for 2025 after she won a third WNBA title and a record-setting fourth MVP.<\/p>\n

“It’s an honor when you think about the group of women who have won before,” she told the AP’s Doug Feinberg<\/a>. “Just to have my name be a part of it, I’m blessed.”<\/p>\n

On Aug. 2, the Aces fell back to .500 with a lopsided 111-58 loss to the Minnesota Lynx. The margin of victory was the biggest ever<\/a> for a road team.<\/p>\n

Getting embarrassed by the Lynx for a second time\u2014Minnesota also won by 31 points on July 25\u2014lit a fire under Las Vegas, and Wilson was at the fore during the team’s blistering closing stretch.<\/p>\n

The Aces won their final 16 games of the regular season. Over that span, Wilson averaged<\/a> 26.1 points, 12.0 rebounds, 1.6 steals and 2.3 blocks. She also shot 52.7 percent from the floor and hit 59.3 percent of her threes.<\/p>\n

What had seemingly been a tight MVP race between Wilson and Lynx star Napheesa Collier proved to be a blowout. Wilson received 51 first-place votes to 18 for Collier.<\/p>\n

The Aces big further cemented her status as the WNBA’s best player by putting up 26.8 points and 10.0 boards per contest during her team’s championship run.<\/p>\n

Wilson was a national champion and won every major individual honor at South Carolina. Between that and what she has achieved in the WNBA, her Hall of Fame case was pretty much settled a few years ago.<\/p>\n

Collecting a fourth MVP and third title before she has even turned 30 puts her on a GOAT-type trajectory. Staying on this path means she’ll have the stats and awards to rival any other contender for the distinction.<\/p>\n

As the cliche goes, genius is never understood in its time. When it comes to Wilson, fans shouldn’t lose sight of the generational talent they’re watching before their eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The accolades continue to pile up for Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson. The Associated Press named the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-484707","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\/484707","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=484707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}