A’ja Wilson spent this calendar year doing something almost no one in sports could match: dominating every inch of her field. The Las Vegas Aces superstar didn’t just win WNBA MVP and lead her team to another championship. She swept the sport’s biggest individual honors, collecting Defensive Player of the Year and Finals MVP along the way.
That historic run has now earned her TIME’s 2025 Athlete of the Year, marking the second straight year a WNBA player has received the honor. And in the process, Wilson accomplished something no basketball player before her ever has.
A’ja Wilson Named TIME’s 2025 Athlete of the Year and Talks Thanos
Fellow WNBA star Caitlin Clark won this award last year, and Wilson is now the third-ever basketball player to win Time’s Athlete of the Year. Los Angeles Lakers legend and icon LeBron James, now playing in his 23rd season in the NBA, won the award in 2020.
As well as all the accolades mentioned earlier, Wilson also walked away with the scoring title, averaging 23.4 points per game. Furthermore, Wilson is the first player in NBA and WNBA history to win a championship, scoring title, MVP, Finals MVP, and Defensive Player of the Year all in the same year. Unquestionably, an incredible, not to mention historic, year for the Aces superstar.
Wilson flexed in her own way during the day of the Aces’ championship parade. She wore the ‘Golden Gauntlet’ to cover her left hand, a nod to supervillian Thanos from the Marvel movie franchise.
Essentially, each stone on her hand represents all her achievements won in 2025. “When you’ve collected everything that’s Thanos.” Elaborating further, she told TIME, “I collected everything… no one’s ever done what I’ve done. And I think people really needed to understand that.”
After achieving what she did this calendar year, not to mention winning a gold medal for Team USA at the Olympics in 2024, plus another MVP that year, a flex at the parade seems only fair.
This has been a key year for the WNBA. With unprecedented popularity and increased revenue, Clark is drawing significant interest in the sport. Many WNBA veterans, including Wilson, take issue with the notion that Clark is solely responsible for this rise, which has contributed to toxicity in certain corners of the league.
Nevertheless, all players need to be united for the upcoming CBA, which has been contentious to date. Wilson reminded us all that, in 2025, she was the clear number-one player in the WNBA.
