She’s Baaaaad: A’ja Wilson Entered the WNBA GOAT Conversation in 2023
Midway through the third quarter of Game 4 of the 2023 WNBA Finals, with her team down by eight, A’ja Wilson took over.
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If ever there were a situation for a team to simply bail on a Finals game, this would have been it. Wilson’s Aces had a 2–1 lead in the best-of-five series against the Liberty. But Las Vegas was battered by injuries: After spending the second half of the season without generational talent Candace Parker, the Aces were now also missing point guard Chelsea Gray and center Kiah Stokes, both of whom had suffered recent injuries, forcing the team to field a starting lineup in Game 4 that it had never used before and that included center Cayla George making her first WNBA start since 2018. Las Vegas had trailed since the first quarter, and, by the third, it wasn’t hard to see a case for packing it up and trying to close it out at home in Game 5.
Wilson felt otherwise.
In the space of three minutes, she made the game her own, needing just a few possessions to take control and show off the breadth of her skill set.
First, Wilson pulled up from midrange. Then, she drove to the basket despite four black jerseys in the paint, all left to look on as she made the layup. She next shot over two contesting Liberty players, indifferent to the hands in her face, for a picture-perfect 11-footer. She put all her muscle into a tough spin move in the post. Finally, she went one-on-one with Jonquel Jones, the most aggressive defender for the opposing Liberty, and drew a foul.
The ball never started in her hands. But there was no question on any of these possessions that it would end there.
Although Wilson didn’t get her third league MVP award this season, she was named Finals MVP after averaging 21.3 points and 12.5 boards against the Liberty.
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Wilson scored nine straight points for the Aces. (She contributed four rebounds in this stretch, too, en route to a final line of 24 points and 16 boards.) Those few minutes of dominance put both game and title within reach for Las Vegas, which clinched its second straight championship with a 70–69 win. And they showed why Wilson is the best player in the league right now, certainly, and perhaps ever.
If GOAT talk seems premature for a 27-year-old—fair enough. But it’s hard to watch Wilson and not at least consider the possibility. Even in a guard-driven league, with its corresponding focus on perimeter play, Wilson shines. (Of all the trivia she generated this season, here is perhaps the most insightful: Wilson became the first WNBA player to score 40 points in a game without attempting a three.) At 6'4", she is remarkably quick. Depending on the scenario, she can evoke a classic big or a much more modern positionless player. The league has never seen a talent quite like Wilson. And, yes, it’s time to start questioning whether it has ever seen one as great as her.
Just ask her coach.
Becky Hammon played 16 seasons in the WNBA, either facing or teaming up with everyone who played a key role in the first two decades of the league, and she is unequivocal here. “I played against all of the GOATs,” Hammon said at the Aces’ championship parade. “I’m gonna put it out there. ... This is gonna be the GOAT of all GOATs.”
Wilson’s résumé speaks for itself. There is a statue of her at her alma mater, South Carolina, where she led the women’s basketball team to its first championship, in 2017, and was National Player of the Year in ’18. The No. 1 draft pick that year, she was the unanimous Rookie of the Year, and her game has only grown in the five years since, during which she has led a franchise that had a winning percentage of .291 in the three years before her arrival to three Finals appearances. Wilson has learned to use her length more efficiently on defense; she has added a slew of more complicated moves on offense. Every opponent has to center its defensive scheme on Wilson. But none has quite figured out how to guard her. She is already one of just three WNBA players to have multiple MVPs and multiple Defensive Player of the Year Awards. (The other two are Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes.) And this is with Wilson still squarely in her prime. Who knows how much more hardware is in her future?
In 2023, Wilson set personal highs in points (22.8), rebounds (9.5) and blocks (2.2) per game. It seemed somewhat unjust that she did not come away with a third MVP: A three-way race fractured the vote, with the Sun’s Alyssa Thomas garnering the most first-place nods, while the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart took home the award. The day after the MVP announcement, a furious Hammon blamed herself for not playing Wilson more in the fourth quarters of blowouts. Her star had been punished for her efficiency, she said.
“She put together the greatest individual performance this league has ever seen,” said Hammon, clutching an index card full of stats to make her point. “Efficiency, field goal percentage, rebounding, defense, the whole thing.”
But Wilson got the last laugh. She took home the Finals MVP, the one piece of hardware missing from her trophy cabinet, and Hammon got one more chance to talk up her star.
“I’m trying to think of an NBA comp or a WNBA comp,” Hammon said onstage at the team’s championship parade. “But there is no one in the world like A’ja Wilson.”
