How A’ja Wilson Changed Women’s Basketball Forever

A’ja Wilson: 2x WNBA Champion, 2x Olympic Gold Medalist, 7x WNBA All-Star, 2x WNBA Scoring Champion, 4x WNBA First Team and 4x WNBA MVP, just to list a few of her many, many achievements, she has seemingly done it all; and in a world that is paying closer attention to women’s basketball than ever, her impact, on and off the court, is undeniable.  

Born August 8th, 1996, in South Carolina, A’ja had always been around basketball. Her dad, Roscoe Wilson, was a basketball coach and had played in Europe for many years. He introduced his daughter to basketball when she was just 11, and, as A’ja recalls it, it felt like a torturous experience because she felt she wasn’t very good. As she grew older, though, she became more serious about basketball, eventually playing for her hometown school at South Carolina University. In 2018, she was drafted as the first overall pick by the Las Vegas Aces, and the rest is history.  

When A’ja joined the WNBA in 2018, the league was recovering from its lowest viewed season, with only 171,000 people tuning into the 2017 regular season. However, from 2018 on, those numbers continuously grew. During her rookie season in 2018, viewership grew by 35%, averaging 231,000 regular season viewers. Every year since, the WNBA garnered more and more fans, with the league averaging 1.19 million viewers on ESPN alone, not counting the 54 million views across other platforms in 2024 (thanks to the help of players like Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, whose college basketball runs resulted in high expectations for their rookie seasons). This, though, doesn’t mean that talent only came in when Clark and Reese joined the league, it means two very talented, young players brought attention to a league filled with many more skilled, brilliant athletes like them — they just needed to be given a chance.  

A’ja, though, was present for all of this growth. As she entered her 7th season in 2024 and she witnessed the league growing right in front of her very own eyes. The biggest misconception about women’s basketball (and women’s sports) is that it could never dare to be nearly as fun or interesting as their male counterparts. The reality is that our inability as a society to take women’s sports seriously has massively kept us from seeing what is right in front of us: leagues with promise, future, and talent. A’ja is an example of that, playing like a champion even when no one was paying attention. Now, though, everyone gets to see what talent all has been there along.  

Players like Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier, Phoenix’s Alyssa Thomas, Atlanta’s Alisha Gray, New York’s Breanna Stewart, and obviously, Indiana’s Caitlin Clark and Chicago’s Angel Reese, demonstrate night after night that the WNBA has been interesting all along. But in a league filled with (as you can tell by now) very skilled players, A’ja Wilson has left her mark time and time again. She led Las Vegas to two back-to-back championships, in 2022 and 2023, showing dominance in an era where more people tune in to women’s basketball each year. 

Her impact doesn’t end in the United States, though. She got her first Gold Olympic medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, leading the United States’ Women’s Team by averaging 20.0 points and 2.8 blocks per game. She did the same in the 2024 Paris Olympics, averaging 18.7 points and 10.2 rebounds per game, also becoming the MVP of the tournament. 

Just this past Sunday, it was announced that A’ja was the 2024-2025 season’s Most Valuable Player, making it the second year in a row she wins the award, helping her become the first WNBA player to be named MVP four times. On top of that, A’ja joins the likes of basketball legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, and Lebron James as players who were named MVP four times before age 30. As WNBA players begin getting (truly, and rightfully) recognized in basketball history, players like A’ja are the reminder that everyone should watch women’s sports.  

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