Even with her team on the verge of playoff elimination, A’ja Wilson has had an unbelievable season. And that performance has certainly not gone unnoticed, as the Las Vegas Aces superstar was crowned the 2026 WNBA Most Valuable Player, an award she has now won for the fifth time in her career.
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Even before this latest award, many across the WNBA and women’s basketball at large already held the opinion that A’ja Wilson is the best player in the world. And as it turns out, Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham shares that same sentiment.
“She’s the best player in the world,” Cunningham said of Wilson while she and Drew Hanlen were discussing and analyzing her performance against the Golden State Valkyries during Friday’s episode of her No Hesitation podcast.
And, of course, A’ja Wilson, as she has done in almost every game she has played this season, did deliver meaningful performances amid the suffocating Valkyries defence even as the Aces fell behind in the series. In the first game, she recorded 24 points and four rebounds. Wilson carried the offence but had an unusually difficult shooting night, going 8-of-21 from the field (38.1%) as the Valkyries heavily contested her touches in the paint.
The second game also saw her deliver 24 points, alongside nine rebounds and two assists. This time around, however, she bounced back from her Game 1 shooting struggles by making 9-of-16 field goals (56.3%) and going a perfect 6-of-6 from the free-throw line.
Wilson has been the defining force for the Aces all season, leading the league with an average of 26.2 points per game alongside 9.4 rebounds and a career-high 3.2 assists per game. She also leads the league in blocks at 1.9 per game, adding 1.4 steals per game on top of that.
All of that production culminated in the MVP award on Thursday. And being her fifth MVP win, it sets a brand-new league record that makes her the first five-time MVP in WNBA history. It also marks her third consecutive MVP award, making her the first WNBA player to pull off a three-peat for the honour.
“This one here is just a little bit different,” Wilson said on receiving the award. “As a girl, you dream so big, and you write your goals out, and you just never imagine that you will be able to check them off. That’s why I cried harder on this one because 15-year-old A’ja wasn’t sitting up here dreaming about being a five-time MVP. She wasn’t dreaming about being a three-time champion. She was dreaming about surviving this world. So for me to sit up here surrounded by these trophies, it means a little bit more to me.”
The celebration, however, will not linger for long, not with what is at stake. After losing the first two games against the Valkyries, Wilson is focused entirely on what needs to happen in Game 3 on Friday night. And she has made her intentions unmistakably clear. She will not be participating in the typical pregame ceremony that an MVP winner is usually honoured with during a home game.
“I love the fans, but I will not be doing that,” she said. “I will be warming up with my team. Everyone in this room knows how much of a competitor I am and what my main focus is.”
For the Aces, it is win or go home. And A’ja Wilson, five-time MVP, all-time record holder, and still the most dangerous player in the league when fully locked in, will be doing everything in her power to make sure it is the former. And who knows, she might end up rewriting history again by eventually pulling the Aces to qualification, as no team in WNBA history has even come back from a 2-0 deficit in a playoff series.