Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson added another line to a résumé that already had no equal in her league on Thursday, winning the WNBA Most Valuable Player award for a record fifth time and becoming the first player in league history to win it three years in a row.
Wilson received 65 of 74 first-place votes and 713 total points in balloting conducted by a national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters. Minnesota rookie guard Olivia Miles finished second with 442 points and six first-place votes, followed by Indiana Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell, who earned 287 points. Indiana’s Caitlin Clark placed fourth and New York’s Breanna Stewart fifth.
The numbers behind the award were emphatic. Wilson averaged 26.2 points per game to lead the league in scoring for a third straight season, while also averaging 9.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.9 blocks and 1.4 steals across 41 games. She shot 52.7 percent from the field and 86.4 percent from the free-throw line, and became the first player in league history to average at least 25 points while shooting 50 percent from the floor and 40 percent from three-point range.
Her scoring average was the second-highest of her career, trailing only the league record of 26.9 points per game she set in 2024. She also led the league in blocks, player efficiency rating and win shares, anchoring both ends of the floor for an Aces team that closed the regular season on a seven-game winning streak to finish 31-13 and claim the No. 3 seed in the playoffs.
Wilson, who turned 30 in August, accomplished all of it while managing back problems that kept her out of the FIBA Women’s World Cup in Germany in September. She previously won the MVP award in 2020 and 2022 before starting her current three-year run. With five MVP awards, she now stands alongside Michael Jordan and Bill Russell on the list of five-time winners in American professional basketball. Only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with six NBA MVP awards, has more across the NBA and WNBA.
The announcement made for an emotional scene at the Aces’ practice facility, where Wilson was informed of the honor surrounded by trophies from a career that already includes three championships. Reflecting on her younger self, she said that as a teenager she was focused less on basketball glory than on simply getting through difficult years — a perspective that, she explained, makes the latest award hit differently than the ones before it.
Aces head coach Becky Hammon, who has coached Wilson through the bulk of her prime, reached for a familiar comparison and then discarded it, saying her star had moved beyond any standard benchmark and calling her the most coachable player she has ever worked with.
The award arrives in the middle of the Aces’ playoff run, where Las Vegas is fighting through a second-round series. Wilson has said repeatedly that individual honors matter less to her than banners, and she was quick this week to frame the MVP as motivation rather than a finish line. On the evidence of this season — the scoring title, the defensive awards-level rim protection, and a team that surged into October — the rest of the league still has to go through her to get anywhere.
The voting also mapped the league’s changing of the guard. Miles, a rookie, finishing second signals how quickly Minnesota’s young core has arrived, while Mitchell’s third-place finish rewarded a career scoring season in Indiana and Clark’s fourth place reflected a year in which her playmaking, as much as her shooting, drove the Fever. That Wilson lapped the field anyway — 65 of 74 first-place votes — says less about the challengers than about the standard she has set: to beat her for this award now, a player likely has to have the best season of her life while Wilson has an ordinary one. This year, she did not.
