After completing the greatest season in WNBA history, she was considered a no-brainer winner of the award
A’ja Wilson didn’t need another accolade to validate her all-time greatness, but 2025 delivered them to her anyway — by the handful.
The Las Vegas Aces superstar, already considered of the most greatest players in the history of the WNBA — if not the greatest — has been named TIME’s Athlete of the Year, a title that feels less like a surprise and more like a confirmation of what the rest of the sports world has been watching unfold: the rise of a generational force who is redefining dominance.
A’ja Wilson had the greatest season in WNBA history
Wilson’s résumé reads like something out of sports mythology. She became the first player in WNBA or NBA history to win a scoring title, a championship, Finals MVP, regular-season MVP and Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) in the same season.
Only three other players in either league have won four MVPs before turning 30: Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and LeBron James. All three are not only in the Hall of Fame or are locks to get in, but they are considered to be 3 of the top 10 greatest players to ever lace up their sneakers.
As Melinda French Gates said, according to the Aces X page post: “A’ja isn’t a rising star anymore. She’s at the center of her own solar system.”
Wilson celebrates her historic season
At the Aces’ championship parade, Wilson wore a Thanos-inspired glove — six sparkling “Infinity Stones” for a season in which she collected, well, everything.
“When you’ve collected everything, that’s Thanos,” Wilson told TIME. “And this year, I collected everything. I don’t really talk much s—, I mean crap. I kind of let my game do it. This was my biggest moment of doing it, because no one’s ever done what I’ve done. And I think people really needed to understand that.”
With the Athlete of the Year honor, Wilson joins a powerhouse group of TIME’s 2025 honorees that includes KPop Demon Hunters as Breakthrough of the Year, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan as CEO of the Year, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Entertainer of the Year. But Wilson’s path to this pinnacle wasn’t the smooth, inevitable march it might look like in hindsight.
Wilson led the Aces’ remarkable turnaround in 2025
Midway through the season, the Aces were floundering at .500. They were sitting in 9th place in the league that only allows the top 8 teams into the postseason. Worse, they were embarrassed in a 53-point shellacking to the Minnesota Lynx — a stunning blowout for a championship-caliber team. For Wilson, the moment wasn’t just humbling; it was catalytic.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to get knocked down to get built back up,” she said. “I think 2025 was a wake-up call that I needed, to let me know that I can’t be satisfied with anything. There’s somebody out there that’s going to try to take your job. You need to make sure you’re great at it, every single day.”
The Aces responded with fury. They rattled off 16 straight wins to close the regular season, then survived two grueling playoff series— every possible game against both the Seattle Storm and the Indiana Fever— before arriving at the Finals against Phoenix. And when the moment of truth arrived, it was Wilson, always, who answered.
A’ja Wilson authored her career-defining moment
In Game 3 of the Finals, with 2.2 seconds left on the clock — an almost poetic nod to her jersey number, 22 — Wilson rose up and hit the game-winning shot over the Mercury’s DeWanna Bonner and Alyssa Thomas that sealed the sweep. It was the sort of play that transforms great careers into legendary ones, the kind of cinematic moment even Wilson admits she hadn’t yet had.
“When you think about a lot of GOATs, they have those career-defining shots that solidify you as the best,” Wilson said. “I didn’t really have one of those. I had championships, yeah. But it was never really like a moment of like, ‘Whoooooooo. That’s why she is who she is.’”
Wilson has one now.
She still stops short of calling herself the greatest ever — but she also knows what she’s done. And she knows how difficult she’s making it for anyone who plans to chase her.
Wilson didn’t just win everything in 2025.
She became the standard.