If you’re one who follows the WNBA only on a casual basis, certainly not familiar enough to be calling it “the W” like those who love it most, you might wonder what made 2025 so extraordinary for the great A’ja Wilson.

Her Las Vegas Aces won the league championship. A’ja was named Most Valuable Player. She led the team in scoring, rebounding, blocks and, in general, just leading. Been there, done that, that, that, that, that and that.

So why her, why now? Why is Wilson being honored as The Sporting News Female Athlete of the Year?

MORE: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is SN’s 2025 male Athlete of the Year

A’ja Wilson wins SN’s Female Athlete of the Year

Certainly we could be considered late to the show.

Wilson’s MVP award in 2025 was her fourth in eight WNBA seasons, and this was the third time she was named Defensive Player of the Year. The Ace’s WNBA Finals appearance was Wilson’s fourth trip to that stage, and the championship was her third. This was the second time she earned the Finals MVP trophy. She led the league in scoring for the second year in a row and in blocks for the fifth consecutive season.

She has deserved all the honors received for this dominance, and obviously there were many. This past season was vastly different for Wilson and the Aces, however. Perhaps because of the decision of Kelsey Plum to force her way out of Vegas and the complication coach Becky Hammon and her staff faced in replacing such a prominent player, perhaps because of the apathy mixed with arrogance that frequently infects professional athletic teams that have claimed one or more championships, the Aces were not queens of the league for a very large portion of the season.

Would it be mean to suggest they kind of stunk? OK, so we won’t. On Aug. 2, however, the Aces lost to the Minnesota Lynx by 53 points. They did not score 20 points in any of the four quarters. Every player who appeared, all 10, rang up at least a minus-18 in the box score. Four were minus-30 or worse.

When those torturous 40 minutes were complete, the Aces owned a record of 14-14. In every season since Wilson’s rookie year, they’d only once resided at the .500 mark for even a dozen games. To rescue the season, the team needed everything Wilson could deliver as often as she could manage.

“It was a struggle. It was tough. We always had faith in each other, and obviously A’ja is our leader. She never lost faith. She was honest with us,” veteran center Kiah Stokes told The Sporting News. “Every postgame, every bad loss that we had, she was the first one to be like, ‘Y’all, that’s on me. I’ve got to come out better. I’ve got to play harder.’

“You don’t have to do that as a superstar. But she does because she puts so much into this game. I will say, probably one of the most honest things she said was after we had that terrible loss to Minnesota, she was like basically, ‘Get it together. We need everyone.’ She’d been taking up for us all year, and she realized this is a team sport. She cannot do this by herself. It was really a challenge to us that we’ve got to get on board or get off the ship. It just motivated everyone to step it up and go to the next level.”

This came in the locker room following that Minnesota game.

“It was very direct. It wasn’t harsh. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just, ‘Hey, reality check, guys. We can’t just keep winning one, losing one, winning one, losing one to think we’re going to make it to the playoffs. The championship wasn’t even being talked about,” Stokes told SN. “We respect her, we trust her word, value what she says because she’s that important to us. But, really, her delivery is key. She’s not going to do the most to make you feel bad about yourself. It was like, ‘We need everyone, whether you’re playing or not … It’s time.”

Wilson followed up with a text in the team group chat afterward, just to assuage any bruised feelings. “Even though it wasn’t that harsh in the first place,” Stokes said.

A’ja Wilson’s leadership changes Aces’ luck

The Las Vegas Aces did not lose another game the rest of the season.

No, really. Not one. There were 16 games remaining in the regular season after the debacle against the Lynx and Vegas won every single one. They won those games by an average of 12.4 points.

It was Aces 1,418, Rest of W 1,220.

They finished with a 30-14 record and the No. 2 playoff seed. The streak was only two games short of the league record set by by the Los Angeles Sparks in 2001, and it’s possible it ended only because there were no more scheduled games.

In the last of those victories, the Aces set a league record with 22 made 3-pointers. Though she is a 6-3 center and attempted only one long-distance shot in her first three seasons, A’ja nailed three herself in that game.

SN Athletes of the Year

The Aces carried all of that momentum into the WNBA playoffs and appeared to be positioned, at last, for an eventual showdown between the league’s best player and the league’s best team, Minnesota’s Lynx, the team that had punished Vegas so fiercely in that midsummer game. It didn’t turn out that way.

The Aces had to battle their way through near-elimination in the first round against the Seattle Storm, which required 38 points from Wilson to secure a one-point victory in the final of the three-game series. And, in the semifinals, things grew even more desperate her and the Aces.

Against an Indiana Fever team that had lost superstar Caitlin Clark for the season after she’d played just 13 games, then lost regulars Sydney Colson, Aari McDonald, Sophie Cunningham, Chloe Bibby and Damiris Dantas before the playoffs began, the Aces were pushed all the way to a decisive game. Indeed, that Game 5 needed overtime to produce a winner.

In that ultimate series game – which, as it turned out, clinched the title for the Aces given their 4-0 sweep of Phoenix in the Finals – Wilson delivered 35 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 blocks and 4 steals and just a single turnover. She was a plus-12 in her 41 minutes on the court.

“No. 1, it’s her skill set: Her ability to knock down jumpers, to attack you off the bounce, score high-degree-of-difficult shots, fadeaways. She has such a high release point,” Fever coach Stephanie White told SN. “It’s the way Becky uses her, too, when they invert actions, bring her off of screens. You guard her with a post player, try to get length and size, and they’re not used to defending off of pin-downs and pin-aways, those kinds of things. Her IQ and her activity – all of those things make her hard to guard.

“Just like any great player, you’re not going to stop them. You just want to make them make the toughest shot possible for 40 minutes.”

White was pleased with the defensive work done by her young All-Star center, Aliyah Boston, but you can see in her own stats part of the cost of facing Wilson for a series of games. Boston averaged 15 points and 8.2 rebounds in her third season with the Fever, but in the Vegas series was held below her scoring average in four of the five games.

A lot of that was Wilson’s customary defensive excellence. At least some of it was the undeniable toll Boston paid for regularly defending Wilson. In Game 5, Boston fouled out in just 32 minutes, missing the entire OT period.

The evolution of A’ja Wilson

“The thing that’s impressed me most is just the way that her game has evolved,” White told SN. While in charge of the Vanderbilt program, she coached against Wilson’s 2017 NCAA champions from South Carolina, when A’ja mostly crushed opponents inside and tried just 16 3-point shots in four years.

“She was just such a dominant low-block player. You had to put one player behind her and one in front, try to sandwich her and keep her from getting the ball,” White said, before referencing the development of a face-up game, extended shooting range and attacking defenses off the dribble.

“She’s developed perimeter and face-up skills to just become the best player in the world. She has an intensity level about her, a discipline about the way she does things. You don’t often see players who don’t play in the offseason come back and have the same rhythm, timing. It’s like she hasn’t lost anything. That’s a tribute to how she works in the offseason.

“You see greatness, the best in the world, someone who’s won multiple championships and is still hungry – multiple championships and MVPs – and is still hungry, still not satisfied.”

Even from halfway across the country, and dealing with the Fever’s avalanche of injury absences, White could perceive how Wilson fought to make this season relevant for the Aces when surrendering to the obvious struggles would have been so convenient.

“I think A’ja is awesome,” Stokes, Wilson’s teammate since 2021, told SN. “We’re very similar in that we’re kind of introverted, so we bond in that way. We’re always cracking jokes. She comes to me a lot on the defensive end just for any tips or advice, and I’m there to help any way I can. It’s just amazing. We’re very honest and we can talk to each other about anything, and always very supportive.

“It was so honorable of her to share the Defensive Player of the Year, back in ’23, just to say that was me was pretty awesome. She’s so selfless, and it’s been an honor to play alongside her all these years.”