Is A’ja Wilson already the GOAT of women’s basketball?
Becky Hammon has long been clear on her feelings about A’ja Wilson, but nothing was more to the point than when she took the mic at the Las Vegas Aces’ second championship parade.
“I played against all the GOATs,” said Hammon, the Aces’ head coach and former franchise player. “Imma put it out there. This is going to be the GOAT of the GOATs.”
Wilson, who finished third in one of the closest MVP votes in history, has upped her game yet again in her seventh season. She is en route to setting the WNBA record for the highest season scoring average and carried the Aces while point guard Chelsea Gray remained out with a foot injury the first quarter of the season.
What she’s accomplished this year alone is already lengthy and historic with one-third of the schedule yet to be played. The 6-foot-4 center started the season with five straight games of at least 20 points and 10 rebounds, the longest streak in league history. She’s added seven since, including a 24-point, 20-rebound showcase against Seattle last week. The 450 total points Wilson scored during the first 20 games of the season are the most in history by 26 points.
In her last six games before the All-Star and Olympic break, she’s averaged 29.3 points and 15.1 rebounds. She became the first WNBA player to average at least 25 and 15 over a five-game span, according to Across the Timeline. She leads the league on a historic scoring run, averaging 27.2 points per game, as well as ranking first in rebounds (12) and blocks (2.9). She could become the first player in league history to lead those three categories in the same season.
The phrase “greatest of all time” has been thrown around a bit recently in terms of the franchise, the league and the women’s game itself. What makes one the greatest? That’s in the eye of the beholder. The list of qualities to consider are lengthy and varied: records, championships, dominance, success, impact.
As Wilson re-joins the national team this weekend to play in the WNBA All-Star game, for which she finished third in fan voting, and leads Team USA as the face of the latest generation in a long lineage of success, it’s a good time to assess her GOAT status.
Stats and championships
The numbers place players in the GOAT pool, and Wilson, 27, has enough to be near the top while posting one of the greatest single seasons in WNBA history.
She’s on pace to set the average scoring record and join Diana Taurasi as the only players to break 25 points per game. Taurasi averaged 25.29 in 2006, her second season. Wilson is in her seventh after averaging a previous career-best 22.8 last year and 20 over her first six seasons.
She could rival the single-season average rebound record set by Sylvia Fowles (11.88 in 2018) while currently averaging the fifth-most career rebounds (9.03). It’s the second consecutive season she’s leading the league in blocks (2.7), which are the most since 2016, trailing only shot-blocking greats Brittney Griner, Margo Dydek, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson.
This isn’t a one-off success story. She’s been one of the best in the world for years now and recently set the Las Vegas Aces franchise scoring record. When she added a 3-point shot to her game — a focus when Hammon came to town in 2022 — Wilson became one of the most difficult forwards to guard.
“It’s a whole problem [for opponents] when she starts shooting that thing with confidence, and I think she is now,” Hammon said after Wilson’s season-best 3-of-4 mark from beyond the arc against Dallas on July 7.
After attempting two 3s in her first four years, she’s 55-for-150 since and averaging a career-best 39.5% from beyond the arc this year. There aren’t many negatives on the scouting report, particularly this year as she tears through a season fresh off the scorn of a fourth-place MVP ballot.
The snub fueled Wilson, though the trophy case is already overflowing. She is one of seven players to win two MVPs, two Defensive Player of the Year awards and a Finals MVP. She is the youngest of those seven. There are also two WNBA championship rings with another possibly on the horizon, even if it’s an uphill battle after some early struggles in the standings.
The number of titles matters most in GOAT chatter, but how they’re acquired is part of the equation. Three consecutive titles has only been done once in WNBA history. The Houston Comets led by Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson and Cynthia Cooper won the first four in league history.
Rebekkah Brunson leads all players with five championships. She won the 2005 title with the Sacramento Monarchs before joining the Minnesota Lynx for their four-in-seven-years title stretch. Maya Moore and Seimone Augustus played on those teams. It’s fair to say those players are in the GOAT pool.
Then there are players whose multiple championships came surrounded by different cores. Sue Bird won titles in three different decades with the Seattle Storm: 2004, 2010, 2018 and 2020. The legendary point guard won the first with Jackson, the second with Jackson and Swin Cash, and the third and fourth with Jewell Loyd and Breanna Stewart.
Candace Parker became the first to win a title with three different teams. She has one each with Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas. Gray, Wilson’s teammate, won a title with Parker in Los Angeles and added two with Las Vegas.
Throwing it back to Wilson’s South Carolina days, she won the program’s first national championship in 2017 and won Final Four Most Outstanding Player. The South Carolina native is the most decorated athlete in program and school history. At the international level, she has a gold medal from the Tokyo Olympics, two World Cup golds and several from the youth team level. Wilson has never played overseas during WNBA offseasons as many players such as Breanna Stewart, another GOAT contender, did in the early part of their careers.
Longevity, impact and era
Time creates GOATs. It’s right in the name. But it has to be a balance, because playing the longest and seeing one’s name at the top of career total stats in the record books isn’t enough. And it includes timing, because eras differ in style and competition levels.
Taurasi has one of the longest careers (20 seasons) of any WNBA player, as did Bird before her recent retirement. Taurasi is the league’s all-time leading scorer (10,447 points as of Wednesday morning) and ranks sixth in career average (18.99). She only has one MVP, though the award favors forwards.
She’s largely viewed as the game’s GOAT because of an illustrious career of milestones, success and consistency. She is one of the most well-known players who broke through into the larger sports picture. Taurasi won five of the eight consecutive USA Olympic golds and spent most of her career playing year-round, winning titles in Europe on the best teams in Russia.
The other side is Moore, a four-time champion who could have toppled all of that in due time. The legendary forward’s success was concentrated within seven years and she made it to the Finals six times. She left the game in 2019 to pursue criminal justice reform and officially announced her retirement in January 2023.
Wilson’s career, were it to end tomorrow, would look more like Moore’s than Taurasi’s. That alone might not make her the GOAT yet.
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The early-era Comets superstars made incredible impacts and legacies, but were in such a different era that makes it difficult to claim top status. It’s more competitive now around the league as players have higher skill sets. The game is also faster paced and there is more scoring, which inflates the numbers.
The impact of a player has to be measured differently on and off the court, though some indicators remain the same. Wilson will receive her own signature shoe in 2025, Nike announced this spring. She joins Stewart, who moved to Puma to have her own shoe, and Sabrina Ionescu, one of the first collegiate superstars of a new era of increased women’s basketball coverage, as active players with their own signature shoes. Swoopes, Leslie, Cooper, Taurasi and Parker were among the few who had their own shoes and are all GOAT contenders for their mix of impact and on-court success.
Wilson wrote a book and will grace the NBA 2K cover, an honor that only recently included women players. She has long-standing brand deals that put her in the cultural zeitgeist, such as being on a bag of Ruffles at the grocery store.
Does that impact alone make her the GOAT? No, but it helps her staying power as she breezes past basketball greats in the record books. There may never be a clear “GOAT of GOATs” because everyone values all of these variables differently. For now, Wilson is solidly in the pool with an entire second half of her career to take the throne Hammon believes she’ll claim.
