Someday, we will look back on the 2025 WNBA season as the year when A’ja Wilson changed the terms of the GOAT debate, and someday should start immediately. Wilson is the best player ever to play women’s basketball. If you want to make the case for somebody else, go ahead. But the burden of proof is yours.
Wilson is 29. She has won three WNBA titles and two Finals MVPs. She also has won four WNBA MVPs, more than anybody else, and she should probably have at least five. Five players have won the MVP award and the Defensive Player of the Year award in the same season. Wilson is the only one to do it twice, and the only one to do it in the last 18 years.
The WNBA talent pool is deeper than it’s ever been, yet Wilson is so clearly the best player that any arguments against her are just contrarianism. She is the league’s top scorer and rim protector, and has been both for years. In this era, the players who get fans excited are almost invariably guards, and there might be a half-dozen players you would prefer to watch. But if you want to win, Wilson is the choice. (See: Game 3 of this year’s WNBA Finals.)
Her game is so efficient and refined that it is easy to take for granted. But Wilson just went on what has to be the greatest tear in the history of the game.
In the final 16 games of the regular season, she averaged 26.1 points, 12 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 2.3 blocks, 1.6 steals and just 1.9 turnovers. She shot 52.7 percent from the field, 59.3% from three and 89% from the free throw line.
The best way to stop her is to hope she fouls out. The problem there is that Wilson has played 267 regular-season games and fouled out once. She has played 55 postseason games and never even picked up a fifth foul.
Those who know have known for a while. In 2022, Aces point guard Chelsea Gray said Wilson “absolutely” would be in the GOAT conversation: “It should already be starting to be talked about.” It wasn’t, really. Gray won Finals MVP over Wilson.The next year, Wilson finished third in the WNBA MVP voting, which was preposterous at the time and has looked progressively worse since.
3x Champion and now 2x FINALS MVP 🏆🏆
— WNBA (@WNBA) October 11, 2025
A’JA WILSON IS ON TOP YET AGAIN!
WNBA FINALS @YouTubeTV pic.twitter.com/JhbX0YXWpR
Breanna Stewart and Alyssa Thomas finished 1–2. Great players. First-ballot Hall of Famers. But Wilson was the best player in the league, and she proved it by dominating Stewart’s Liberty in the Finals that year. The Liberty had two MVPs (Stewart and Jonquel Jones), and for Game 4 in New York, the Aces were missing Gray and Kiah Stokes. Wilson put up 24 points and 16 rebounds and ended the Liberty’s season.
The next season, Wilson was the unanimous MVP. This year, the narrative favored Napheesa Collier: She is a great two-way player who played on the best regular-season team, and she hadn’t won an MVP. If the race had been even, Collier probably would have won. Wilson won handily.
Wilson is a naturally bubbly person. Many WNBA players support Collier in her battle with commissioner Cathy Engelbert, but only Wilson referred to Collier as a “business girlie.” As her college coach, Dawn Staley, told me a few years ago, Wilson “always wants to be liked. She’s now realizing [the way] to be liked is saying and doing the right thing.”
Wilson’s personality masks the reality that every WNBA team has learned: She has become a ruthless destroyer of opponents. She leads, she elevates, she dominates. She is the best to ever do it, and she is a long way from done.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as A’ja Wilson Is Certifiably the GOAT.
