{"id":586930,"date":"2026-04-16T02:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/586930\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T02:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:46:09","slug":"brittney-griner-joins-connecticut-sun-after-aja-wilsons-historic-5-million-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/586930\/","title":{"rendered":"Brittney Griner Joins Connecticut Sun After A’ja Wilson’s Historic $5 Million Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britney Griner will play for the Connecticut Sun for the 2026 WNBA<\/a> season. Griner is joining a Sun squad that had a tough year in 2025, finishing with an 11-33 record. Only Angel Reese<\/a>\u2019s Chicago Sky<\/a> (10-34) and Paige Bueckers<\/a>\u2019 Dallas Wings (10-34) finished with worse records.<\/p>\n

Griner, 35, is in her 12th WNBA season. The 6-foot-9 center averaged 9.8 points and 5.2 rebounds per game with the Atlanta Dream in 2025. The Chester W. Nimitz High School graduate has by far the most dunks in WNBA history<\/a> (27, according to BetMGM<\/a>), with no other player even reaching double digits.<\/p>\n

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\"Atlanta<\/p>\n

Atlanta Dream center Brittney GrinerDale Zanine-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

A\u2019ja Wilson is a center for the Las Vegas Aces<\/a> and a former teammate of Griner. The two played together on the gold medal-winning USA Basketball women\u2019s national teams in the Tokyo (2020) and Paris (2024) Olympics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With four MVP awards (2020, 2022, 2024, 2025), including three in the last four seasons, Wilson is widely considered the best player in the league. She led the Las Vegas Aces to the 2025 WNBA title, where she won her second Finals MVP award.<\/p>\n

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The Aces have won three of the last four championships (2022, 2023, 2025). Wilson has led the WNBA in scoring each of the last two seasons (26.9 in 2024, 23.4 in 2025). Still in the prime of her career, Las Vegas has decided to reward the Heathwood Hall Episcopal School graduate.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Aces announced that they had re-signed Wilson to a historic three-year, $5 million contract, the largest in WNBA history. Wilson celebrated the signing<\/a> on social media, with Griner chiming in to cheer her on.<\/p>\n

\u201cTop-tier blessing!\u201d Wilson posted on Instagram Threads. \u201c\ud83e\udd0d We got work to do \ud83e\ude9c\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cCongrats, fam! \ud83d\udcaa\ud83c\udffe\u201d Griner replied underneath.<\/p>\n

\u201cAppreciate youuu \ud83d\ude4f\ud83c\udffd\ud83d\ude4f\ud83c\udffd,\u201d Wilson replied.<\/p>\n

Griner and Connecticut will face Wilson and Las Vegas on May 13 and May 15.<\/p>\n

Related: Angel Reese Reacts After Former Chicago Sky Teammate Returns to WNBA<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Apr 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the WNBA<\/a> section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britney Griner will play for the Connecticut Sun for the 2026 WNBA season. Griner is joining a Sun…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[650,3691,3444,256744,438,4384,2114,4677,99,434,66313,83943],"class_list":{"0":"post-586930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-aja-wilson","9":"tag-angel-reese","10":"tag-atlanta-dream","11":"tag-britney-griner","12":"tag-chicago-sky","13":"tag-connecticut-sun","14":"tag-las-vegas","15":"tag-las-vegas-aces","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-wnba","18":"tag-wnba-history","19":"tag-wnba-season"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586930","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=586930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}