After the 2023 WNBA season ended with the Las Vegas Aces winning their second consecutive championship and A’ja Wilson winning Finals MVP, Wilson had a message.
“To everyone who voted for me as fourth-place (MVP), thank you. I really appreciate it,” Wilson said of the team’s championship rally. “I just want to say thank you, because it means I have a lot more work to do.”
The 2024 Aces were disappointing compared to expectations, but Wilson was not. As she vowed in October of last year, Wilson returned as an improved player in her seventh WNBA season.
Wilson, who has already won two MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards, now holds the record for most points in a single season. Against the Indiana Fever and rookie Kaitlin Clark, Wilson scored 941 points in the second quarter, breaking Jewel Lloyd’s single-season record of 939 points set in 2023.
An additional 941 buckets are expected to be added in 2024.
The WNBA single-season leading scorer is A’JA WILSON. #Welcome to W pic.twitter.com/ysR3DWubVz
— WNBA (@WNBA) September 11, 2024
Many single-season WNBA records have been broken over the past two years since the regular season expanded to 40 games. When the league debuted in 1997, the season was 28 games. The next year it was 30 games, and the year after that it was 32 games until 2002. The regular season was 34 games from 2003-19, during which time Diana Taurasi set a scoring mark that has stood until last season.
Still, Wilson’s statistics don’t require additional games to break the record. Through 34 games, Wilson has scored 929 points, more than anyone in league history, comfortably ahead of Taurasi’s 860 points in 2006. Wilson was averaging 27.3 points entering Wednesday’s game.
She just needs to add 83 more points over her final five games to record the highest scoring average in a WNBA season, surpassing Taurasi’s 25.3.
In addition to points, Wilson also leads the league in defensive rebounds, blocks, turnover percentage and win shares, a huge accomplishment for a player considered a potential MVP candidate.
“I never want to forget how good (A’ja) is,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said before the Fever game. “She just does it all. She’s in the middle of a run sometimes where you want to shake her and say, ‘Do you know how good you are?’ But you don’t want to shake her because you don’t want to wake her up. She just stays where she is.”
The area has made Wilson a great historical companion. Wilson has threatened Taurasi’s record as the league’s all-time scoring leader in seven seasons of her career. She has a better scoring average at this age (20.9 vs. 20.7), and the WNBA’s expanded schedule allows Wilson to reach Taurasi’s total in fewer seasons.
For now, Wilson and Ace are only after a third title, but the greatest player of all time can’t help but set some personal records along the way.
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(Photo: Justin Casterline / NBAE via Getty Images)
