They forged a bond, and Staley and Wilson still talk regularly. \u201cI send an encouraging text
message. Sometimes they need a little censorship,\u201d Staley says. \u201cBut she\u2019s a thinker and a perfectionist. She wants the work that she puts in to
have results.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under Staley, Wilson led the Gamecocks to a national championship\u2014the first in school history\u2014and became a three-time consensus All-American. Her dominance in college raised the program\u2019s recruiting profile significantly, and the Gamecocks are now perennial Final Four fixtures. (In 2021, when Wilson was just 24 years old, the school erected a statue in her honor\u2014this on the campus where Wilson\u2019s grandmother couldn\u2019t set foot as a girl in the segregated South.)<\/p>\n
Wilson entered the WNBA draft in 2018. The unproven Las Vegas Aces\u2014a team that had just relocated from San Antonio after finishing last in the league\u2014had the first pick, and with Wilson they quickly turned their fortunes around. The team has won three league titles in the past four seasons, and Wilson has herself accumulated enough hardware to stock a slot machine: four MVP and three Defensive Player of the Year awards, not to mention two Olympic gold medals as a member of Team USA.<\/p>\n
But for someone like Wilson, who has suffered from bouts of anxiety and self-doubt, the relentless WNBA season\u201444 games in four months\u2014can be overwhelming. A month into the season, Wilson\u2019s team was faltering and she was shouldering the pressure. During a break in the action in one early game, when Wilson wasn\u2019t shooting well, Hammon walked out onto the court and simply gave her a hug: \u201cI could just feel the weight,\u201d Hammon remembers. The Aces bottomed out with a 53-point loss to the Minnesota Lynx in early August. \u201cNever lost that bad in my life,\u201d Wilson says with a grimace, \u201cand it was on national television.\u201d<\/p>\n
The drubbing triggered something. \u201cA\u2019ja is a look, sound, feel person,\u201d Staley says. \u201cWhen they went through the lowest point, it didn\u2019t feel right to her. So she activated.\u201d And not just her. Wilson\u2019s veteran teammates\u2014including Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young, and Jewell Loyd, all of whom already had multiple titles to their name\u2014went on an implausible tear, going 25\u20133 through the postseason. Wilson sank her triumphant shot in the finals and got named the series MVP.<\/p>\n
After the celebration, Wilson was drained. \u201cThe outside world looking in, everyone\u2019s just like, \u2018Oh, you had an amazing shot! You won the championship, you should be on top of the world!\u2019\u2005\u201d Wilson says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, for that moment.\u2019\u2005\u201d Around Thanksgiving, the reality of what she\u2019d been through hit her: \u201cI finally got to unpack the emotional toll that it took on me, the spiritual toll it took on me, the physical toll.\u201d<\/p>\n
The toll had gotten to her before. After the Aces got swept by the Seattle Storm in the 2020 finals, Wilson suffered a panic attack while on vacation with her parents. She started going to therapy and working on \u201cprotecting her peace,\u201d a principle Staley instilled in her in college\u2014focusing on the people and spiritual practices that help keep her grounded. \u201cShe\u2019s not a Bible-thumper,\u201d Roscoe says, but \u201cA\u2019ja is very deep in her faith.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They forged a bond, and Staley and Wilson still talk regularly. \u201cI send an encouraging textmessage. Sometimes they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1766,99,246875,4880,434],"class_list":["post-555628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-magazine","tag-sports","tag-storytypeprofile","tag-textabovecenterfullbleed","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555628","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=555628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}