A“Yes, Wilson’s only season ended not just with confetti, but with a deeper affirmation. When her aces are from Las Vegas completed a four-game win over the Phoenix Mercury On Friday night, after becoming the second team in WNBA history to win three titles in four years, the final sound was less a punchline than a verdict: the best team of an era, led by the best player of an era. When the dust settled, the 29-year-old from Columbia, South Carolina, achieved a quadrafect that no player in the NBA or WNBA had ever achieved: winning the scoring title, the Most Valuable Player award, the Defensive Player of the Year award and the Finals MVP that same year.
Thanks to Wilson, the team that looked like the next great American sports dynasty before slipping from their perch a year ago, they returned to the top of the mountain. But anyone who watched the first half of the season knows that of the three banners, Ace was the least expected. For most of the year, Las Vegas didn't look like a playoff team, let alone a champion. They overcame injuries and misfires, abandoned coin toss games and wore the cohesion of a group playing below their standards. If dynasties should hum, this one coughed and spat.
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To understand how we got here, let's go back to August 2, when Asa passed the boat race with a lead of 53 points by the Minnesota Lynx on national television, the worst loss in franchise history and the ultimate stress test for the culture Becky Hammon spent four seasons building. Las Vegas was then moribund at 14-14, with six weeks to go and barely in the postseason. Wilson walked out of the Michelob Ultra Arena, re-enacting the wreckage, writing and reworking the message she knew would break through without burning away what was left of her fighting spirit. She trained with her partner Bam Adebayo, two-time Olympic gold medalist and captain of the Miami Heat, and then hit send on the team chat: If you weren't ashamed of yesterday, don't come to this gym. You are not wanted or needed here. We need to change our mindset because it was awkward.
Vegas beat Golden State the next day and never lost again in the regular season, reeling off 16 straight wins and clinching second place as Wilson raced into the past. to a record fourth MVP trophy. Hammon struck that tone by making a structural adjustment that made a difference: Players would have to write and submit their own scouting reports before coaches would get involved. Accountability has ceased to be a slogan and has become an operating system. “Aya comes in with a laptop,” Hammon told ESPN. “They will kick out the coaches and do their job.”
Only then does the image that will live on come into focus – two days before the sweep, in front of a sold-out Phoenix crowd of 17,071 in full swing – Wilson rises, turns and scores from eight feet with 0.3 seconds left in the third as DeWanna Bonner and Alyssa Thomas fill her airspace. This shot – they thought first call from a married couple in the history of basketball – not just won the game. This effectively cemented the Aces' place in WNBA history.
The win will be the headline, but the point of the title is that mid-season a decision was made to prioritize standards over excuses. They had a hot playoff series that tried to knock them out of the game, with Seattle forcing a decisive third game that needed a late refusal from Jackie Young; Indiana dragged them in overtime, game 5 it would break lesser champions. “There was also a lot of doubt in that locker room,” A's point guard Chelsea Gray said. “We stayed the course and trusted the process the entire time.”
And there was always Wilson: narrowing options at the rim and expanding them at the elbow, the league's most fearsome stopper and purest late-hour answer in the same package. Watching her do her work is a special joy. If her Game 3 winner was a cinematic effect, her Game 4 finish was a masterclass in control when jumpers didn't go down. On a night when she missed 14 of 21 attempts from the floor, Wilson instead changed the conditions – owning the glass, making accurate shots, jumping in passing lanes, getting home at the stripe and getting there 17 of 19. Possession after possession, she bent the game to her will.
This year we're moving away from neat resume writing to something a little more sparse. Wilson wasn't just the best player in the series; she was the best player in the sport, entering the GOAT conversation that long ago began with the legend Cheryl Miller and the sparkling peak of Maya Moore. She carries weight easily, which is part of the spell. beat to the tambourine on the podium during the postgame press conference — equal parts Baptist church joke and credo about patience and faith — landed because it sounded like her: vulnerable, joyful, before calmly, matter-of-factly and clearly laying out the work needed to win.
Asked to redefine greatness now that she's unifying championships in a historic clip, Wilson widened her lens. “Obviously I wouldn't care [say] banners, but I think greatness is… who you are around. This is greatness. This group is here, we have been battle-tested, battle-tested from top to bottom. We came in every single day with the intention of being great,” she said after Friday. “You have to be great when the lights aren't on you. You have to be great when there's no one in the gym with you. You have to be great, even if you end up getting nothing. That's what greatness means to me, because it's consistency and it's just you doing the right thing because it's the right thing.”
Hammon's assessment was a scathing epigraph to the season: You can discuss basketball's Mount Rushmore if you want, but Wilson is “alone on Everest.” That sounds like flattery until you try to explain Wilson's 2025 without resorting to the obvious truth that she controlled both ends of the floor more completely than any of her peers. The Aces' stars switched roles without complaint – Young went from flamethrower to defender; Gray from closer to the organizer; as a free agent Jewell Loyd (now 10-0 in WNBA Finalsby the way) from gunner to tenacity – and minutes on the bench, which once seemed like a burden, turned into leverage thanks to Dana Evans and company. But it all revolved around the same gravity as their 6ft 4in mascot. The closer the series got to the swing period, the calmer Wilson breathed.
Then it will be not only about basketball, but also about business. Much of the WNBA workforce, including key aces, is approaching free agency as the deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement ticks louder. This uncertainty persisted even as the confetti fell. This also continued for two weeks, with renewed friction between the league office and locker rooms. Comment Reports attributed to Commissioner Kathy Engelbert the idea of players “kneeling” in gratitude – something Englebert partially disputes – hit like a cymbal crash with the reality on the court: players are the product. The audience at the Mortgage Negotiation Center emphasized this point. to a cacophony of whistles while presenting the trophies to Engleburt, with Gray doing so from the dais. “When you have great players, you have to treat them that way. It's pay. It's treatment. It's revenue share,” she said. “There is no league without players.”
In the end, two scenes drive home the truth of this season: the August message on the night of the 53-point embarrassment and the October disappearance that shut down the cauldron in the desert. The incredible midseason turn into inevitability—choosing to recommit and then refusing to blink—turned both into canon. The aces again discovered their banner at the bottom and rode it back to the top. Perhaps the verdict was given from the very beginning by the player who had just authored a unique season.
