A’ja Wilson walked into the interview glowing with that rare combination of peace and fire — the kind athletes only discover when they’re playing their best basketball and carrying the weight of history on their backs. Her Las Vegas Aces were riding a monstrous 15-game winning streak, but what startled everyone wasn’t just the wins. It was the joy. The calm. The pure belief radiating through a locker room that had once been drowning in questions.
“We’re playing with a lot of joy and a lot of peace,” she said, smiling like someone who had finally unlocked the final level of her craft. “It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen this locker room.”
This season hasn’t been a straight shot to dominance. There were trenches. Doubts. Defensive breakdowns. But the Aces didn’t cave. They rebuilt themselves from the inside out — player-only game plans, accountability charts, and a team-wide decision to reclaim their identity. They didn’t add superstitions or rituals. They didn’t need them. The superstition was the standard.
Now? They look like the Aces the world expects: terrifying, smooth, and unstoppable.
But for Wilson, the winning streak is only a piece of a year that feels like a destiny-defining chapter. She set record after record, including the most 30-point games in a single WNBA season — a historic feat she still reacts to with genuine disbelief.
“Absolutely not,” she laughed when asked if she ever imagined this career. “If I had dreamed this, I probably would’ve laughed at myself.”
She talks about her accomplishments like someone who still feels the weight of gratitude, someone deeply aware of how rare her position is — but just as aware of the responsibility that comes with it. Every record, every milestone, every accolade? She never takes a second for granted.
That humility is shaped by the giants she learned from — a generation of Hall of Famers who laid every brick of the road she walks on today.
This year’s Hall of Fame class — Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles, and Maya Moore — hits especially close. To Wilson, these women aren’t just legends. They’re architects of the entire league as she knows it.
“They’re our GOATs,” she said, her voice softening. “They’re the people who laid the foundation down for me to thrive.”
She paints portraits of each one:
Sylvia Fowles — the mentor she never officially shared a WNBA jersey with, yet the one who guided her like a teammate anyway.
Sue Bird — the leader who makes you believe you can run through a brick wall with just a few words.
Maya Moore — the almost mythic force whose rhythm and fearlessness left rookie A’ja in awe.
These women didn’t just inspire her. They shaped her. And now Wilson stands on the very path they cleared, possibly as the next great player destined for a burnt-orange Hall of Fame jacket.
But ask her about that future, and she instantly pulls back. She refuses to get lost in what’s ahead.
“I haven’t given it a thought,” she insists. “I’m just in the moment.”
Still, even she admits that the thought of standing on a Hall of Fame stage one day — with her journey on full display — is something deeply powerful.
That’s what makes the most emotional moment of the interview hit so hard.
The host plays a clip from Cynthia Cooper — Houston Comets icon, one of the greatest champions in basketball history — speaking about who inspires her. Her answer? A’ja Wilson.
Cooper didn’t whisper it. She declared it.
“A’ja Wilson connects me to greatness,” Cooper said. “She is unapologetically A’ja Wilson.”
Wilson froze. She blinked. She laughed in disbelief. She teared up.
“That is so cool,” she finally whispered. “I have no words.”
This is the invisible thread running through Wilson’s career — connection. Legacy. The passing of wisdom through generations like a sacred torch.
So when she speaks about the two biggest influences in her life, she doesn’t hesitate: Dawn Staley and Becky Hammon.
Two titans. Two teachers. Two women who shaped her into the force she is today.
With Staley, it was identity. Permission to be her vibrant, quirky, ambitious self while learning what it truly means to lead.
With Hammon, it was accountability. The art of standing firm in who you are. Owning your greatness. Never backing down from the business of basketball or the weight of responsibility that comes with it.
“They passed the baton,” Wilson said. “And there’s never been a drop-off.”
These lessons now flow through Wilson into the next generation — the rookies who describe her as the veteran who changed their view of the league, the standard-bearer who sets the bar impossibly high yet still lifts them as they climb.
This season’s rookie class is loaded, but Wilson beams when she talks about them.
“The league is in great hands,” she said proudly. “This wave of players? They’re the best that’s yet to come.”
Her work with AT&T’s Beyond the Bleachers campaign shows an even more intimate side — a woman who sees the power in young people long before they see it in themselves. She opens her life to them, connects with them, uplifts them, and sometimes even spends full days with them — like she recently did with Jaden Hilton, a South Carolina graduate student and aspiring coach.
Hilton’s journey — from fighting through a life-threatening medical battle to chasing her dreams — struck Wilson immediately.
“Those moments are bigger than me scoring 30,” Wilson said. “Those are the powerful ones.”
She believes Hilton could become the next Dawn Staley — and she means it.
Connection. Impact. Legacy. These aren’t talking points for Wilson. They’re the rhythm of her life.
So when the interview winds down and she’s asked the simplest question — What can we expect from the Aces in the playoffs? — she doesn’t offer a slogan or prediction.
She just smiles confidently.
“It’s going to be the Aces in the playoffs,” she says. “It’s going to be good.”
And somehow, that one sentence says everything.
The joy.
The peace.
The fire.
The legacy.
The greatness she learned.
The greatness she is building.
The greatness she will pass down.
A’ja Wilson isn’t just playing basketball.
She’s continuing a lineage — and creating one of her own.
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