The WNBA awarded A’ja Wilson with her third Most Valuable Player award Sunday. She won all 67 first-place votes. The honor makes Wilson the first unanimous MVP since Cynthia Cooper in the WNBA’s inaugural year, 1997.
However, while Wilson broke the single-season record for total points, points per game and total rebounds, her team, the Las Vegas Aces, had a down year. After winning back-to-back championships and finishing as the first seed in the playoffs in 2022 and 2023, the Aces came into the 2024 Playoffs as the fourth seed.
If impact metrics are to be believed, Wilson didn’t do much to help her team get back to the top in the regular season, either. While the Aces still had a +6.5 net rating with Wilson on the court, that was 2.7 points worse than they were with Wilson off the court.
While Wilson’s historic individual numbers are beyond impressive, looking beyond them, it's hard to argue that a player who statistically made her team worse when she was on the court was the most valuable.
Take the Aces’ first game of the 2024 Playoffs Sunday against the Storm for example. Although the Aces won by 11 points, they were only 3 points better than the Storm with Wilson on the court, as Wilson scored 21 points on a relatively unremarkable 9-of-21 shooting.
The real MVP is the second-place finisher, who was one second-place vote away from being the unanimous runner-up, Napheesa Collier of the Minnesota Lynx.
Collier had an incredibly impressive season in 2024, averaging 20.4 points, 9.7 rebounds and 3.4 assists, statistically being one of the most productive defensive players in the league as well. Collier’s Lynx team also finished as the second seed in the 2024 Playoffs.
Collier has improved every year she’s been in the WNBA, growing her game as a player, and becoming more impactful in the process. Her outside shot has improved, as has her playmaking and defense, averaging career-highs in assists and blocks per game while tying her career-high in steals.
Offensively, Collier gets her job done close to the basket, at six foot one, bullying smaller players in close for hooks, fadeaways and layups. Defensively, however, Collier is one of the best in the league, using her quick feet and best-in-league hand-eye coordination to disrupt plays routinely.
The impact numbers not only back up everything else Collier showcases, but also amplify it.
The Lynx with Collier on the court, outscored teams by an average of 13.9 points per 100 possessions. When Collier came off, they got outscored 6.3 points per 100 possessions, an overall 20.2-point swing.
An advocate for the validity of Wilson’s MVP might point to other advanced metrics might point to an advanced stat like win shares which Wilson broke the single-season record in this year. Although win shares are an advanced stat on the basis of having a complicated formula, the reality is that most of the variables involved are box score statistics like points and rebounds, which, as previously covered, does not equate to on-court impact.
All of that considered, congratulations are due to Wilson on a historic season and being named just the second unanimous WNBA MVP in league history. However, the criteria for how the award was selected seems to have been done with very surface-level analysis, rather than answer the question the award poses: Who is truly the most valuable player?
Logan Adams is a junior studying journalism. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Logan know by tweeting him @LoganPAdams.
