A'ja Wilson unfiltered: The WNBA star opens up about her record-breaking season
“Yeah, a lot of good things are happening. Yeah, we’re grateful in this space, in a game that’s growing, but it’s like, ‘Damn, at what cost? What are we doing?'”
On a September morning after her Aces won in Seattle, A’ja Wilson walks inside a production studio a few miles south of Las Vegas, wearing her bonnet, sweats and Crocs, before a trio of hair and makeup assistants swarms her to get her ready for a photo shoot. An hour later, as she waits for the shoot to begin, she opens up about everything that is swirling around her.
Wilson has had one of the best seasons in basketball history: an Olympic gold medal, the single-season WNBA points record, the single-season rebounding record and her third MVP, this one unanimous. Despite her greatness, her Aces haven’t looked like themselves for most of the season as they attempt a three-peat. Injuries, controversies and uncharacteristic losses landed them as the fourth seed in this year’s playoffs, where they now find themselves in a two-game hole in their best-of-five semifinal series against the Liberty, with Game 3 on Friday night.
This year’s struggles have come during a historic season that has earned the league unprecedented viewership and attention. But the players, including Wilson and her peers, have reported a rise in racist and disrespectful behavior from fans.
In turn, Wilson has deleted social media from her phone and has accepted that everyone might not appreciate her talent. We spoke about this and more throughout two conversations in August and September, covering how this season has affected her and how her life story has prepared her for this moment, as she cements her status as one of the greatest to ever do it.
The interviews have been edited for clarity.
In your locker room speech that went viral, you said it has been difficult to be yourself this season. What did you mean by that? I mean for us, as Black women, we grew up, a lot of time, with our parents telling us, “You got to work 10 times as hard just to get a foot in the door, let alone to stand out.“ I felt that more this year than ever. Throughout the whole course of my career, yes, I’ve had times where I’m like, “Dang, this is hard. This is weird. I don’t like it. It’s uncomfortable.” But at the same time, I’ll work through it. This year just has really shown — blatantly — that you really have to work your ass off in order for people just to even look at you. No matter how well you’re doing, there’s always a certain amount of people that’s going to try to downgrade you and sweep you under the rug.
This year is more the year that I’ve seen anyone call my game boring than it’s ever been. I’m like, “OK, cool, whatever.” You have some people that’s like, “Oh, she’s having the best season of her life,” and you have some people that’s like, “Nah, I don’t even like it.” So, you use that in some senses, and it can get to you. It can get exhausting having to show up every single day and people may not show you the worth that you want. But at the same time, if I know my worth, I don’t pay that any mind. It was just a vulnerable moment for me to let my teammates know that on a lot of days where I don’t feel myself, I could come to the gym and count on them. They changed my whole perspective on who I am in life.
Why do you like escape rooms so much? Who told you about escape rooms? That’s crazy.
It’s not important who told me about the escape rooms! I heard you really jack the escape rooms, though. I am lit at escape rooms. I love it because it makes me think. Literally, in escape rooms, I feel like everything is legit a clue, and I love that. Sometimes I kind of translate it over into my life where it’s little things where I’m like, “What is God telling me? What is he trying to show me?” I just love it because you just get different personalities in a room and you figure out people’s strengths and weaknesses and you use that. For instance, my mother, we took her to one, and she was awful. We were like, you know what? You’re going to let us know how much time is going by. She was good at that. She’s very punctual. She’s someone that’s going to make sure you keep in check. Time watch is the perfect job for her. Versus my dad who is always three clues ahead. I love them because it really brings out a lot of people’s strengths and at the same time, it really gets your mind going. I’m a huge fan. Call me a nerd, but I love it.
What helps you relax during the season — besides your dogs? I was about to say my puppies. I’m really chill. I can’t really say what I really want to say. [Laughs] No, but when it comes to relaxing, I definitely just disconnect myself from the game. I really don’t watch it. Anytime you’re at my house, I’m probably having cartoons on because I’m just tired of seeing humans. I’m tired of hearing humans. So, sometimes animation really helps me just kind of chill in a sense. I love cartoons. I love a good murder show — just disconnecting from the game. I don’t really think about it. I don’t watch it enough so I can kind of miss it a little bit.
Favorite cartoon? Favorite murder show right now? My favorite murder show would have to be (“American Murder: Laci Peterson”) on Netflix. I think her husband did it and will forever think her husband did it. And my favorite cartoon right now, I got to go with “The Boondocks.”
It’s a classic. “The Boondocks,” heavy.
Did you do escape rooms when you played in Indiana? Yes, I did do that. Three escape rooms.
Three?! Two in one day. [Laughs]
Between the games or before the first game? Yeah, between the games.
What were the escape rooms like in Indiana? It is pretty cool. The more escape rooms you do, the more you see which cities really dive into storytelling. I think Indiana did a great job. We did a crime-stopping one, a spaceship one, and the other was like a haunted mansion. These were really fun. They made us think. I was actually surprised that Indiana had good escape rooms.
It’s tough to ignore social media, but you’ve been through a lot of this before. How did you approach pressure this season when it felt like it was the worst it’s been? Cut my phone off. Just disconnect from social. I delete my socials and I wake up, I’m like, “Dang, my day is actually going pretty smoothly.” I’m more attentive. I’m more in tune with my life — my real actual life.
That’s the beautiful thing about social media is that it can go away if you just really don’t pay it any mind. It’s kind of like a plant in water. It’s going to grow. It’s going to consume you. But if not, it dies. And then it goes away. In some cases, I really kind of stayed off of social just to protect my mental because I’m not about to fight with computer warriors. I’m not about to be there. I’ll be there all day. When it came to pressure, I would just disconnect myself. I had two of my best friends come out one weekend and I think that was probably the best weekend and time that they could have came out. They’re two of my friends that don’t play basketball. They allowed me to be A’ja and not the girl in a uniform. That’s how I handle pressures — just kind of escape it. Disconnecting from it.
The WNBA has taken off the past few years, but it’s weird to see it this year. It feels like a lot of Black women in the league have been criticized. Has that been a downer? It really has, in my sense, because it feels like, it’s not like we’re timid, but it’s like you don’t want us to do stuff, you just don’t want to hear the noise. It strips us from the genuine [happiness] and pureness and love of the game. Just like, “I don’t even want to go down this road.” I know it’s going to be some idiotic person that’s going to talk crazy and then I have to continue to take the high road. That gets exhausting. That’s something that I’ve really seen this year that I’ve never seen before. It’s just like, damned, if you do, damned if you don’t. And you constantly have to live in that life for four months and over time it’s just, “Ugh.” I dreaded being in Indiana, not because it was like the city or nothing, it was just like, I just don’t want no s— to pop off.
It’s like that feeling of constantly having to have that guard up, constantly having to just protect yourself and being ready to take the high road. Living like that sucks, but it’s something that you have to continue to do. It’s kind of like code-switching to putting that mask on. You just gotta do it. This year we see it more than ever and it sucks and I hope it just dies down. We’re starting to lose the beauty of the game of basketball. That’s what I hate the most about it. You’re always going to have those barbershop talks. Yeah, whatever, just keep it the game. But in the world that we’re in, they just can’t do that. Maybe because it’s an election year, I don’t know. These folks going crazy.
Who have you been able to rely on the most, or who has been a confidant who you actually work with? Probably Sydney Colson. Everybody laughs at our relationship. That’s the big sister that I never wanted. I’m just like, every day is annoying as hell, but that’s our relationship. We love on each other. We can have the real conversation. She could check me and be like, “Yo, you’re the greatest, so act that way, move that way and we are going to be behind you.”
We all as a team just kind of talk about it. It is an elephant in the room that this year is weird. Yeah, a lot of good things are happening. Yeah, we’re grateful in this space, in a game that’s growing, but it’s like, “Damn, at what cost? What are we doing?” We’re losing the recipes of the love of the game. For us, as the Aces, we really kind of keep things close-knit. We all are handling it differently. We do a pretty good job of keeping each other good.
How has your leadership style evolved this year and how have the pressures this year tested your patience in terms of your leadership? Oh God, it’s tested my patience plenty of times. When you’re losing, it puts a whole different perspective on it. Now everyone’s like, “What’s the problem, A’ja?” It doesn’t matter how good you’re doing. It doesn’t matter how great you feel. People are always going to look to the one to be like, “What’s the issue? It’s your fault. Change it.” And that’s hard. When it came to my leadership, I’ve really just created bonds with my teammates and just continue to try to get the best out of them and know that it’s not just going to take me to do a three-peat. It’s going to take all of us from one to 12 now and just having them understand that it’s not going to be pretty. It’s going to be a long journey and we gotta stick together through it all. “Weather the storm.” We just always say that. It’s going to hit hard one time, “Weather the storm.” That’s what I think my leadership has changed, versus, old A’ja would’ve been like, “S—, let’s just go do this. Let’s try it. It doesn’t work — next.” But now I’m like, “No, let’s weather this thing. Let’s get it. Let’s continue to do it. There’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel.”
How have you still been able to have fun this year? I’ve watched you since May and your routine has remained the same. No matter where you go, no matter the crowd. How have you maintained that level of consistency and peace? It’s just who I am. I’ve been in low, dark places where I haven’t been myself and I let the enemy, I let the trolls win and it sucked because it wasn’t me. I was people-pleasing and it was imposter syndrome. I lost myself in that. So, I made a deal with myself leaving the bubble that I will never let those people win. Now when I approach it, I approach it myself, and like it or love it, I’m going to be me and then we going to keep it pushing. I made a deal with myself that I’m not going to go down that road of people-pleasing and letting people see me down or let them see me uncomfortable. They’re going to get the best A’ja they can and on my terms. I just don’t want to lose sight of that.
This year has been rockier for a variety of reasons. Is it more fun when y’all are the favorites, or is it better to get that status of being on top? It’s a mixture of both. Sometimes you need that wake-up call because winning can shield a lot of things. But when you lose, everything is on a magnifying glass. It makes you look in the mirror and be like, “Damn, everything I do off the court can affect us on the court.” Everything matters. Don’t take anything for granted. So, I like the fact that we started off rocky.
You’ve said you were willing to accept being the villain like you did at South Carolina. It’s the same setup, but now, you’re so accomplished. What does it mean for you this time? It’s a quote on our jumbotron. “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” That is like us. They hail us, they hail us, they hail us, then they nail us and nail us, nail us. Sometimes you have no choice but to be like, “F— it, this is what y’all do to me. Let’s rock. Let me show y’all exactly how we get down and never shake from that.” So, you just find beauty in it. If we got to be the villains and that gets us a third championship, call me the Joker. I am here ready to take on that role. We’re going to always be the villain. We are in spaces that a lot of people don’t want to see us in, so they’re going to try to throw anything at us and make it seem like we don’t deserve it and make it seem like we’re out of place. So it’s like, all right, why fight that? Let’s go ahead and fight this battle, man.
Tell me a little bit about growing up in South Carolina. [Hopkins] is not the biggest city. It’s pretty small. So, everybody knows everybody and particularly the Black culture and the community. Between growing up around the church with my grandfather or just being a homebody, everyone pretty much knew the Wilsons and growing up was just tons of fun because I felt like I was just always at home. I always knew somebody or someone always knew me. In some cases, that wasn’t the best, but in a lot of cases, it was super cool. Just like I said, I was a homebody, so I would just kick it at home with my parents. We’ll watch tons of just different movies. It could be anything from animation to real crime to “CSI: Miami.” At the same time, we could just go outside and throw the basketball and football around, and then in the house, we play, “The Floor is Lava.” I really made the best of what I had and I was very fortunate enough to have two parents that were always supportive of me, always wanted me to do me and have fun in that.
Tell me about your church. You said you were following your grandfather. What was that like? I go to Saint John Baptist Church. It’s a church on the corner. It’s kind of what you hear about Southern churches in the movies. [Laughs] My grandfather preached there, I want to say for 50-plus years. We would always sit in the first pew and I had to act a certain way. I’ve always been just kind of like the happy-go-lucky girl. I was the one that would get other people in trouble. I would laugh at certain things, and people couldn’t sing in church. It was just tons of fun, and we had a children’s church. I went to preschool there, so I literally just grew up in the church. They’ve always looked after me.
What do you think is one thing you learned as a little girl from the church that still stays with you? I would say never forgetting my roots. Never forgetting where I came from, but always looking ahead at where I want to go. That is something that’s always been with me every step of the way. I always say, even if my driver’s license has changed, I’m still going to be from South Carolina. That’s going to always be my home. So me, it’s always going back to my roots and understanding that it honestly takes a village to raise someone like me and never forgetting that and holding on to that, and always know, wherever I go, however I play, I’m representing something that’s bigger than me. Whether that’s a young Black girl, whether that’s a young Black girl in the South, whether that is just somebody that’s like, “I don’t feel like doing this but I’m going to keep going and keep going and I want to be the best at it.” I feel like I’m always a representation for that.
Your father played professional basketball. Sometimes it can be difficult for parents who were athletes to hand down those lessons. [Roscoe Wilson, Jr., previously told me that he was “very, very tough” with A’ja and “very direct,” which sometimes clashed with her and her mother Eva.] Do you remember the first big disagreement you had with your dad about basketball? Oh, the first day he even tried me. [Laughs] I feel like that’s the biggest difference and that’s why sometimes I laugh when I look at other young kids that their parents have played the game and I’m just like, “Oh, I was complete opposite.” I kind of pumped my dad with the gas, the brakes quick, and I was like, “All right, we are not about to be doing all this fussing and cussing and yelling, because I really don’t want to do this anyways. I’m doing this for you.” [Laughs] We had an understanding of where we were going to go down this road. But I just remember us being in a gym and — I don’t know if he told you — but I just could not separate Dad and coach.
My mom was not letting me do that. So when he was yelling at me and just wondering why I can’t make a shot or wondering why I keep missing, I just couldn’t understand why my dad was yelling at me because I was imperfect. It just didn’t make sense to it. That’s when we had our biggest argument. I mean I’m pretty sure people on the other end of the gym was like, “Are they OK? Should we call somebody to come pick up this child?” But it was a moment where I just went home and I literally was like, “Mom, I’m not about to do this with this man. Kick him out or I’m leaving. I am packing my stuff. I’m going to my grandma house because I’m done with it.” It’s not even like that. I also think that was a turning point for my dad in a sense to let him know that I have to do it my own way in order for me to love it.
I think from that moment, that’s when he kind of took a step back and was like, “OK, I’ll give her the basketball and I’m going to let her do what she want to do when she wants to do it and let her fall in love with it herself.” I think if my dad would’ve kept harping on me and just taking the fun out of it, I don’t think I would be playing basketball right now. He kind of saw within himself, “All right, I can still be disciplined with her, but at the same time let her figure it out.” It allowed me to now find my passion and love and want and greed for the game. And then that’s where it developed. But yeah, it wasn’t that long ago or it wasn’t that long in the process of our first disagreement because I wasn’t going for that.
What did you find? Most athletes of your caliber have similar stories of their parents pushing them. What made you be like, “This is what I want to do?” I went to a camp in South Carolina and they put me with the daycare group. It’s a group they invite where they want to actually see play. They put me with the daycare group, and respectfully, I sucked. I didn’t want to be there. Once again, I get it, daycare. But then we all came back together as a camp and I remember Carla McGhee was a coach at South Carolina at the time, and she was just like, “If you’re going to play this game, you need to play it the right way. Don’t disrespect my game.” It was like a smack in the face to me at a young age, and I had to be, I don’t even know, maybe 13, 14 years old. I was just like, “Oh my God, I cannot disrespect this game.” I felt like I was disrespecting the game because I wasn’t properly training for it and my mind wasn’t properly there. So after that, I came in with the mindset of — “OK, this is what I want to do and I have to be great at it. I do not want to disrespect this game.” It was just like a shadow over me that’s like, “Always respect the game.”
From there on, I started watching it more. I started to enjoy seeing my teammates win more because I didn’t just go out the gate and was great. I had to watch it and it sucked being on the sideline when your team would win and you really can’t even hold the trophy because you didn’t do nothing. So I was like, “I want to be able to hold a trophy.” I don’t want people to be scratching their heads, “Why she holding a trophy?” So then that’s when I just started to watch it more. It was on every TV channel and at the time, the W wasn’t really like that. So I was watching the men’s side of it and I just started just going after it. I just wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to be invested in basketball and then that’s when I just never let it go.
How old were you? I was about 13, 14 years old.
What was the moment for you when everything clicked? My moment had to be Boo Williams, it’s a tournament in Virginia. It is just college coaches out there saying, “All right, we just here looking for a diamond in the rough.” I just remember looking around and because our courts weren’t really the courts. We didn’t really have any big names, but I guess people just took a chance, and my name was starting to float around. That’s when there was a huddle of just coaches around our court, and I’m like, “What is going on?” I was like, “F— it, let’s go play. Let’s go hoop.”
I just went out there and I can’t remember how many points I scored, but the game just felt fluid. It just felt like it was just rhythm to the game. That’s when I felt like I had my aha moment, like, “OK, I’ve made it out of the daycare range of camp, now I’m getting the visits, now I can be invited to these college camps and be a part of the camps.” It was just a game where I just looked like everything was just in slow motion and I was just in rhythm and we were just hooping together. It was a big moment for me because once I got home, college letters are starting to come in, and the mailman is like, “Who is this at this house? I’m constantly delivering mail there.” So, that moment was like, “OK, this is me. This is A’ja Wilson coming on the scene.” [Laughs]
When do you think you developed your focus, especially your focus on becoming great? I would honestly have to say my sophomore year in college. That’s a little late now that I think about it. We lost in the Sweet 16 in South Dakota against Syracuse, and this was coming off of freshman year, my first time going to the Final Four. We had the same team coming back, core-wise. So it was written for us to go back to the Final Four in a sense. I felt like that was after we lost in South Dakota to Syracuse. When I tell you I left everything, I walked on the plane with nothing. I was like, “I have nothing left to even bring with me.” It was a turning point in my career because that was my first devastating loss. Obviously, I would lose all the time and those would sting a little bit, but it was always something else would happen to where I’m like, “OK, that loss wasn’t that bad.”
When it came to high school, I won my championship my senior year, so it kind of capped all the losses. Then my freshman year going to the Final Four, you can’t really count that as a loss because people weren’t expecting this. But that sophomore year, when we lost, that was my first good check. Like, “Oh no.” So my focus shifted. I wanted to always be like, “All right, I don’t want my teammates to feel that way. So what we about to do?” And my whole mindset, we would just shift. I feel like that’s when, I don’t want to say the villain was created, but the monster was created. That is when I kind of got that bad taste in my mouth where I was just like, “OK, enough for the funny business — let’s win.”
That was a big turning point in my career because that loss hurt. It was a point when the buzzer went off, I thought that was just the end of the third. I was like, “There’s no way we’re losing this game.” When the buzzer went off, I was like, “All right, bet, we’ve got another quarter.” And I just see my seniors dropping. I see everybody’s eyes welling up and I’m like, “Oh no, this was it.” I was like, “Oh, wait, we going back to the locker room?” That’s when it hit a young age. You’re like, “Oh no, this game is going to teach you some lessons.”
Y’all lost when you were a sophomore and then y’all won everything the next year. What was it about coach Dawn Staley’s philosophy that really kind of pushed y’all over the top? It just starts with your leadership. It just starts with you. Everyone’s looking around in the huddle speaking, what are we going to do? And then when they look at you, it’s like you have 11, 12 minds that you have to will together to say, “We are about to do this and it’s going to look different every game.” It’s going to look different every year, but how can you will your teammates to the top? I always looked at Coach Staley and she would always say, “Championship teams always have a certain look, a certain feeling, a certain sound.” If we can check those off, we’re going to be good because we have the talent, we have enough. It’s just a matter of who is going to do the most talking on defense. Who’s going to do the little things? Who’s going to hold each other accountable? And that was on us.
I tried to make sure that we could simulate our locker room as a championship locker room, that there were no gray areas, and we just went out there and we did us. It felt so natural and so real to us that it was like, “Nah, this is our time to shine.” Now we have to continue to build this culture and know that that is the championship culture that we have to attack — every time we step into the gym. When you have someone like Coach Staley that’s going to make you do that, you really can’t shy away from it and she’s going to call you out on your BS. I can then do that to my teammates. I think that’s the biggest thing.
Was there a significant moment that you adopted that villain mindset? At some point, that’s how you were painted while you were in South Carolina. Yeah, sometimes I feel like the villain is something that we all become at some point. So, you have to kind of just embrace it and use it as your own. Villain is just a hard word because I don’t consider myself a villain. But when I say a dog, and someone that’s going to do whatever it takes to win, that’s me. That’s the mindset that we kind of took on. OK, paint this picture of me, that’s fine, but I’m going to continue to build, I’m going to continue to grow, and I’m going to continue to win. So, you can constantly have to see my face and know what a real dog looks like. That’s kind of what we’ve always instilled, and it’s what I’ve also done for the Aces. Say what you want, do what you want, however you please. But at the end of the day, we going to make you check that résumé. We going to make you remember who we are, and we’re going to win.
Wardrobe styling by Amadi Brooks; Hair styling by Myesha Jamerson; Makeup styling by Regina Craig.
Look 1: Hooded Shrug by Ashton Michael; jewelry by Grown Brilliance; shoes by Smash Shoes; sneaker corset by FRISKMEGOOD; skirt by Atousa G
Look 2: Corset by Milla Nova; jacket by Nike Women by YOON; jewelry by Grown Brilliance; shoes by AMBUSH X Nike; skirt by Ashya Shanell, custom; socks by Nike
