Over the next week, SB Nation can be introducing every of the 12 members of the US Olympic Girls’s Basketball workforce.
Right here’s what it is advisable learn about A’ja Wilson, essentially the most dominant basketball participant within the girls’s area proper now.
Quick Details
Workforce: Las Vegas Aces (16-8)
Common Season Stats: 27.2 factors (52.7% FG), 11.9 rebounds, 3.8 blocks, 1.8 steals
Place: Heart
Draft Class: 2018, Choose #1
All-Star Choices: 6 (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
Earlier Olympic Appearances: 2020 Olympic gold medalist (5×5)
Faculty: South Carolina – gained 2017 nationwide championship
It’s exhausting to make a case that anybody aside from A’ja Wilson is the most effective participant on this planet
A’ja Wilson is a two-time league MVP, a two-time Defensive Participant of the 12 months, and final yr’s Finals MVP. But — by some means — she’s enjoying her finest basketball proper now. Wilson is averaging a 27.2 factors per sport on 52.7% capturing, the best scoring common of any participant within the WNBA. She’s the league’s second-best rebounder, with 11.9 boards a sport, and she’s the main shotblocker, averaging 2.8 blocks per night time.
Because it at the moment stands, Wilson appears to be the main candidate for 2 distinct common season honors – MVP and DPOY. Her school coach, Daybreak Staley, just lately acknowledged she believed Wilson ought to win each awards, in addition to the Most Improved Participant honor.
That’s not prone to occur, however Staley’s sentiment displays the truth that Wilson has by some means managed to raise her sport even additional this season.
A’ja Wilson just lately introduced her new shoe cope with Nike
It in all probability got here too late — however in Could, she introduced a highly-anticipated signature shoe cope with Nike, set to formally launch in 2025. The shoe, referred to as the “A’One”, was introduced in Columbia, South Carolina – Wilson’s alma mater and hometown.
She’s the primary Black girl to get her personal signature shoe with Nike since Sheryl Swoopes in 2002, and he or she joins Sabrina Ionescu, Breanna Stewart, and Caitlin Clark as the one energetic WNBA gamers with signature offers.
Over the previous few years, public strain had mounted relating to the very fact different gamers, together with Sabrina Ionescu and Caitlin Clark, acquired shoe offers earlier than her.
“We’ve been engaged on this for a few years now, and I simply needed it to be good,” Wilson informed the Las Vegas Assessment-Journal’s Callie Lawson-Freeman. “I didn’t need this to be one thing that was similar to a handout.”
She wasn’t at all times good at basketball
Actually, Wilson famously hated basketball — and sweating — as a child. She reluctantly picked up a basketball in eighth grade, and simply barely made the workforce, she mentioned in an interview with Marie Claire. She described herself as “terrible” on the sport; a “late, late, late, late, late bloomer.” She recalled by chance dribbling within the unsuitable path one sport.
However, after being on a workforce that gained the championship in eighth grade, she fell in love with the game in a single day. By highschool, she was already elite, and led her workforce to a state championship her senior season. That’s when she acquired hooked for the long term.
A’ja Wilson is a Gamecock legend
South Carolina has produced among the prime gamers in girls’s basketball, and Wilson headlines the pack. She led South Carolina to an NCAA title in 2017, and was subsequently the primary Gamecock participant to ever be named Naismith Faculty Participant of the 12 months. She was additionally a three-time SEC Participant of the 12 months, averaging 17.3 factors (on 54.2% capturing) and eight.7 rebounds in 4 seasons.
In January, South Carolina Athletics put in a statue of Wilson in entrance of Colonial Life Area.
“A’ja was a strong drive in our program, our campus and our group by way of all the pieces that she completed on the courtroom and the particular person she was off it,” Daybreak Staley mentioned. “This statue in entrance of this enviornment is an equally highly effective drive. Each younger particular person, and particularly younger black ladies, can see what is feasible by way of exhausting work, ardour and dedication.”