A'ja Wilson Wins Record Fifth WNBA MVP Award

History in the making

Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson learned she had won the league's 2026 Most Valuable Player award in unusual fashion. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert handed her a phone playing a congratulatory voice message from former Vice President Kamala Harris, delivering the news in front of Wilson's family and team officials. It is the fifth WNBA MVP honor of her career and the third in a row, a run no player in league history has matched.

Wilson, 30, has now taken the award in 2020, 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026. No other player in league history has won more than three, a mark shared by Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson. According to the Associated Press, Wilson collected 65 of the 74 first-place votes from a national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters, along with nine second-place votes, for a total of 713 points.

Speaking after the announcement, Wilson said this trophy made her cry harder than the others. She recalled that as a teenager she had not been dreaming of MVP awards or championships, but had been, in her words, "dreaming about surviving this world." She described the moment as "a little bit different" from the ones that came before. Wilson also said it was an honor to share the announcement with Harris, the first woman to serve as vice president. Her mother, Eva, presented her with the trophy in a room that included Engelbert, Aces owner Mark Davis and team president Nikki Fargas.

A season for the ages

The vote margin was wide, but the competition behind Wilson was strong. Minnesota Lynx rookie Olivia Miles finished second with 442 points and six first-place votes. Indiana Fever guards Kelsey Mitchell and Caitlin Clark followed with 287 and 212 points respectively, reported by ESPN, while New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart was fifth with 171 points.

Wilson's season numbers explain the landslide. She led the league in scoring for the third straight season at 26.2 points per game on nearly 53 percent shooting, according to NBC Sports. She added 9.4 rebounds, a career-best 3.2 assists and 1.9 blocks per game, and topped the league in blocks for the fifth consecutive year. Her scoring average was the second highest in WNBA history, trailing only the 26.9 mark she set herself in 2024.

ESPN pointed to a statistical line no WNBA player had ever posted: at least 25 points per game on 50 percent shooting while hitting 40 percent from three-point range. For a center carrying that kind of scoring load, it was uncharted territory in the league. Wilson led the league in scoring and in blocks for the fifth consecutive year, all while the Aces finished 31-13 and earned the No. 3 seed in the playoffs.

The race still drew attention beyond the winner. Miles put together a runner-up finish as a rookie, and Clark and Mitchell kept the Fever represented with two of the top four spots. Wilson won by a margin that removed any doubt.

Standing with the greats

Five career MVPs puts Wilson alongside the most decorated names in the men's game. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA MVP awards, while Michael Jordan and Bill Russell each won five. Wilson called being mentioned with those names "basketball royalty" and said the journey to get there had not been easy.

Her list of honors was already long before Thursday. Wilson was the first overall pick in the 2018 draft, became the league's first four-time MVP a season ago, owns championships with the Aces in 2022, 2023 and 2025, and has two Finals MVP awards. The individual records keep falling, but the team goal is still in front of her.

Las Vegas trails the Golden State Valkyries 2-0 in their best-of-five semifinal series and faces an elimination game on Friday night at home. The Aces have reached the semifinals for the eighth straight season as the defending champions, yet Friday is win or go home. Whatever happens next, the WNBA MVP vote is settled: the best player in the league this season was not close, and the record books now have her name alone at the top.

For more on this week's sports headlines, see our coverage of Hurkacz's upset over Djokovic in Shanghai and MLB's push for a shorter season and bigger playoffs.