The debate is over. On Thursday, A’ja Wilson was named the 2026 WNBA MVP, becoming the first player in league history to win the award three years in a row \u2014 and stretching her record total to five MVPs overall.<\/p>\n
Wilson, 30, collected 65 of the 74 first-place votes and 713 total points from a national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters. Minnesota rookie Olivia Miles finished a distant second with 442 points, followed by Indiana’s Kelsey Mitchell (287), Caitlin Clark (212), and Breanna Stewart (171).<\/p>\n
No other WNBA player has more than three MVPs. Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and Lauren Jackson each won three; Wilson now owns five, adding to the trophies she lifted in 2020 and 2022.<\/p>\n
The season she put together made the vote a formality. Wilson captured her third straight scoring title at 26.2 points per game while shooting 52.7 percent from the field and 40.4 percent from three \u2014 a 25-50-40 combination no WNBA player had ever produced. She added 9.4 rebounds, a career-best 3.2 assists, and 1.9 blocks per game, leading the league in blocks for the fifth time in six seasons.<\/p>\n
She did it all while playing through the back problems that kept her off Team USA at the FIBA World Cup this summer, appearing in 41 games for a Las Vegas team that finished 31-13 and took the No. 3 seed.<\/p>\n
The award arrives with awkward timing. The defending champion Aces are down 2-0 to the Golden State Valkyries in the best-of-five semifinals, one loss from elimination. But Thursday belonged to Wilson, who said the trophy brought heavier emotions than any before it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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