A’ja Wilson
- Born:
- August 8, 1996, Columbia, South Carolina, U.S. (age 28)
Who is A’ja Wilson?
What are some of A’ja Wilson’s achievements in high school and college?
What notable achievements did A’ja Wilson accomplish in the WNBA?
How did A’ja Wilson perform in the 2024 Olympics?
News •
A’ja Wilson (born August 8, 1996, Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.) is a star center for the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA, a three-time Most Valuable Player (MVP) and two-time Defensive Player of the Year who holds the league record for highest single-season scoring average.
Early years
Wilson was born to Roscoe C. Wilson, Jr., and Eva Rakes Wilson. Roscoe Wilson played college basketball at Benedict College, a historically Black college in Columbia, South Carolina, and went on to play professionally in Europe. Eva Wilson worked as a court reporter and helped raise A’ja and her older brother, Renaldo.
Roscoe Wilson’s favorite song was “Aja” by Steely Dan. He told his wife that, if they ever had a girl, he wanted name her for the song. (He added the apostrophe.) It’s pronounced like the continent.
A’ja Wilson started playing basketball at age 11, with her dad as her coach. It was not always fun. “When I was younger, I just thought he was torturing me,” she told ESPN in 2017, recalling exhausting drills he would have her do to improve her game. Her raw talent and dedication began paying off in high school, where she played for Heathwood Hall Episcopal School. In her senior year Wilson averaged about 35 points, 15 rebounds, and 5 blocks per game while leading the team to the state championship title. Parade magazine and the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association named her the national Player of the Year, and she was recognized as the South Carolina Gatorade Player of the Year and Naismith Player of the Year. Wilson was the country’s top prospect in the espnW HoopGurlz Top 100. In 2014 she announced that she would attend the University of South Carolina. During her college career with Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks, Wilson averaged 17.3 points and 8.7 rebounds per game, was a four-time All-American selection, and helped lead the university to victory in the 2016–17 national championship.
Instant pro stardom
In 2018 the Aces selected the 6-foot 4-inch (1.93-meter) Wilson with the first overall pick in the 2018 draft, and she made an immediate impact—averaging 20.7 points and 8 rebounds per game and winning the Rookie of the Year award. In her third season (2020), she was named the league MVP with similar numbers, and she won a second MVP award in 2022 while leading the Aces to the WNBA title. They repeated as champs in 2023. The Aces came up short in their bid for a three-peat in 2024, but Wilson won a third MVP award while breaking the league record for single-season scoring average with 26.9 points per game; that year she also notably notched 11.9 rebounds per game. She was the unanimous pick for MVP, the first time that happened since Cynthia Cooper of the Houston Comets accomplished the feat in the league’s first season (1997). The New York Times has described Wilson as “something like the league’s on-court answer to LeBron James or Michael Jordan.”
The 2024 season was significant for another reason: Wilson became the first player in league history to score 1,000 points in a single season, reaching the milestone in a victory over the Connecticut Sun. She grew emotional after the game while thanking her teammates, telling them, “Y’all will never understand how much y’all mean to me because it’s days where I hate being A’ja Wilson. I hate it. But when I come into work, and I see y’all smiling, and I see y’all just happy.” Later she explained that she had been referring to how hard it can be to be a Black player in the league. In 2025 she elaborated on that theme in an interview with Time magazine:
As a Black woman in the WNBA, we have our struggles in showcasing who we really are. A lot of agendas get pushed on a lot of different platforms that may shadow us. You work so hard, but you still have to work 10 times harder just to be seen.
Outside the WNBA Wilson led the U.S. Olympic basketball team to a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. In the gold-medal game the United States barely held off France, 67–66, thanks in large part to Wilson’s 21 points, 13 rebounds, and 4 blocks, to nail down the United States’ eighth straight gold medal. Wilson was named MVP of the tournament.
Wilson has confidence in her game and is unafraid to showcase it. When asked on the Roommates Show what the score would be between her and guard Josh Hart in a one-on-one game, she said the score “would be like 8 to 11, me,” adding: “I get ball first? Yeah, you’re not going to get it back.” Hart replied that he’d win 11–2 before amending the score, “I would say like a good 11…7.”
Shoe deal controversy
In May 2024 Nike announced that Wilson’s signature shoe, the A’One, would be released. The deal had actually been signed in 2023, but it was kept under wraps. A month before Wilson’s shoe was announced, however, Nike announced that it was developing a signature shoe for WNBA star Caitlin Clark. Shoe deals for WNBA stars are relatively rare and incredibly lucrative for players who can land them, and, given Wilson’s long tenure as a superstar, some questioned whether the rookie Clark seemingly getting a deal before her smacked of racism.
When Wilson’s hot pink shoes made their debut in May 2025, ahead of the start of the WNBA season, Wilson made clear in an interview with The New York Times how important she thought it was that she was the first Black WNBA athlete to have a signature shoe since Candace Parker in 2011:
It’s time for people to have a shoe and see a shoe from someone like me, considering it hasn’t been done in a long, long time and it comes from a Black female athlete in this world. I’m grateful.