A'ja Wilson is Alone on Wrong End of WNBA History After Aces Eliminated
After their 76-62 loss to the New York Liberty on Sunday, the Las Vegas Aces are now eliminated from the WNBA playoffs and their quest for winning three consecutive WNBA championships has come to an end.
Aces star forward A'ja Wilson finished the game with 19 points, 10 rebounds, and a whopping 5 blocks. While this is a solid performance for most players' standards, her point total marks a significant decrease in her regular season points per game average, which was 26.9.
In fact, Wilson's 21.8 points per game in the playoffs marks more than a 5-point-per-game decrease from her regular season numbers.
Of course, that insane regular season production earned Wilson the 2024 WNBA MVP award in unanimous fashion, having earned all 67 first-place votes.
There's no question that Wilson earning this unanimous honor is well deserved. Yet, with her Aces squad coming up short of the WNBA Finals in the wake of her achievement, Wilson now finds herself on the wrong side of history.
X account @StatMamba posted a photo of Wilson after the Aces loss on Sunday and added the caption, "A'ja Wilson is the first unanimous MVP in NBA or WNBA history to not reach the Finals."
A'ja Wilson is the first unanimous MVP in NBA or WNBA history to not reach the Finals. pic.twitter.com/GWdnzU3Qxu
— StatMamba (@StatMamba) October 6, 2024
While Wilson stands alone in this regard, it's important to note that only two other players have won unanimous MVP honors in the WNBA and the NBA's history. In the WNBA, the only person to do so before Wilson was Cynthia Cooper, who won unanimous MVP in 1997.
In the NBA, the only ever unanimous MVP was Steph Curry, who did so with the Golden State Warriors in 2016.
So while the list of unanimous WNBA/NBA MVPs is extremely small, Wilson stands out within it for an unfortunate reason.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.