Katie Barnes is a writer/reporter for ESPN.com. With the hood on her black Aces sweatshirt pulled up, A'ja Wilson walked to the dais 40 minutes after the buzzer sounded on the Aces' season. Her black smiley-face slippers clopped against the stairs. She sat down and drummed her fingers on the table as she fielded questions about why the Aces came up short and what the team's future holds. She looked down at her lap when Chelsea Gray praised her season."MVP man, that girl can ball. She can hoop," Gray said, earning a sadness-tinged smile and chuckle from Wilson. It wasn't the ending Wilson envisioned. She shot just 6-for-19 from the floor on Friday night in Las Vegas, missed three free throws in the fourth quarter, and got her pocket picked with 1:54 to go. The turnover allowed the Valkyries to tie the score with a bucket on the other end. The defending champions never led again. On the next possession, Wilson missed a jumper in the lane and the Valkyries scored again to go up by two. A Jackie Young bucket forced overtime, but the Aces were outscored 16-6 and were swept out of the WNBA semifinals with an 87-77 loss."I want to do everything I can for my team, and I felt like I did not do that at some points," Wilson said at the dais. "So I think that is going to carry over more so than [missing] the free throw or the missed shots."
Wilson's record-breaking fifth MVP season concluded far sooner than she imagined, on a night when she scored 21 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. All season long, she showcased her evolving game. She's a better shooter, a better facilitator, a better defender. But even her greatness has limits. Injuries to teammates, a suffocating Valkyries defense and a pointing fan in Indiana proved too much for even the greatest to overcome. A DAY BEFORE the official demise, Wilson wore a double-breasted Aces red Dolce & Gabbana suit and was flanked by her five MVP trophies. She peered through her black-rimmed glasses as she addressed reporters after receiving her record fifth WNBA MVP trophy and unprecedented third in a row."It truly means a lot, and so I think that's why I cried a little bit harder on this one," Wilson said Thursday. "Because 15-year-old A'ja wasn't sitting up here dreaming about being a five-time MVP. She wasn't dreaming about being a three-time champion. She was dreaming about surviving this world. For me to sit up here surrounded by these trophies and to be able to play the game of basketball every single day just means a little bit more to me."
Surprised by her teammates and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert at practice, Wilson doubled over in tears. Her mother, Eva Rakes Wilson, carried in the newest award for her daughter's stuffed trophy case. Engelbert presented a cream-colored old-fashioned phone to Wilson preloaded with congratulatory messages. She heard from her family, former coaches, each of her teammates, her partner Bam Adebayo, and Kamala Harris, the former vice president and Wilson's fellow Alpha Kappa Alpha alum."Keep being the example. Keep being you," Dawn Staley told Wilson in her message."Little girls around the world, they see you," Lisa Leslie said."You are the blueprint of what an elite athlete should strive to be," Sylvia Fowles told her."This game needed you. Vegas needed you. We all needed you," Chelsea Gray said."Quite frankly, the planet hasn't seen anything like you," Becky Hammon said. Wilson had come a long way from the young girl in Columbia, South Carolina, who spent her time handing out water bottles to her teammates because she wasn't good enough to get on the floor. Now she's arguably the best women's basketball player in history. Wilson dominated the MVP conversation practically from the jump. She dropped 45 points against Connecticut on May 15 and swept the WNBA's Western Conference Player of the Month awards all season. Other players had their moments of MVP candidacy -- Olivia...
Source: ESPN General · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing