A'ja Wilson's 2024 season stands alone in WNBA history

SB Nation

Simply put, A'ja Wilson is really good. For a more complex description of her skills, enjoy the video!  If you want more basketball number crunching from Alex, might I recommend this piece he wrote about Caitlin Clark: https://www.patreon.com/posts/dorktown-column-104169715?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Transcript

00:00Before the calendar ever flipped to 2024, center Asia Wilson was firmly established as an all-time

00:07basketball great, having crafted a resume few other players could match. In 2015, just after

00:13stepping on campus as a college freshman at the University of South Carolina, the Columbia native

00:18helped lead her local program to its first-ever Final Four appearance. A couple years later,

00:24she led coach Dawn Staley's Gamecocks to a national championship, crowned as the Final Four's most

00:30outstanding player. Then as a senior, she won every possible award as the consensus best player in the

00:36nation to cap a collegiate career that just a couple years later would prompt her alma mater to

00:41unveil a statue of her, before becoming the consensus first overall pick in the 2018 WNBA Draft to the

00:48Las Vegas Aces. All she did across her first six years in Sin City was win multiple MVPs, multiple

00:56Defensive Players of the Year, and multiple championships while never failing to make an

01:01all-star game. All this by the end of her age 26 season in 2023, and that doesn't even include her

01:09dominance on the international stage which included helping Dawn Staley's Americans win gold at the

01:142018 FIBA World Cup, and again three years later at the Tokyo Olympics on her 25th birthday. 14 months

01:22after that, she turned in an MVP performance throughout the 2022 FIBA World Cup in bagging another gold,

01:29which she could take solace in after kangaroo sightings proved elusive down under. Easily was

01:36already one of the most accomplished and decorated players in the history of hoops. And then 2024 happened.

01:50I first noticed Asia Wilson's 2024 campaign jumping off the charts on June 21st after she led her Aces to

01:57an 11-point win over the 13-1 Sun. It was Vegas' 14th game, and Wilson's 26 points and 16 rebounds

02:06that contest launched her up to 389 points for the season. Lying herein are the more than 4,500

02:15player seasons throughout the WNBA's first 28 seasons, bookended by 1997 and 2024, all at the

02:24same point of their schedule. On the scoring front, none of them were even all that close. She'd scored

02:3012.4% more points than the 346 compiled by runners-up 15 Elena Deledon and 08 Diana Taurasi.

02:40Meanwhile on the glass, she resides here above north of 99.8% of all the other entrants,

02:47surpassed only by a couple Sylvia Fowle seasons, a couple Yolanda Griffith seasons, 10 Tina Charles,

02:53and 17 Jonquell Jones, none of whom were in her stratosphere offensively. And believe it or not,

03:00there was even a specific point where 24 Wilson was atop both categories all-time. Fast forward a

03:07few weeks to July 16th after Vegas played game number 24, when her 653 points were 8.5% better than 14 Maya

03:16Moore's previous standard-bearing mark, while her 287 rebounds bested by one the total put forth by

03:23rookie sensation Angel Reese in the same season. This is wilt stuff right here. The fact that there

03:30exists a point deep within a schedule where the all-time leader in points and the all-time leader

03:35in rebounds is the same damn person truly is Chamberlain-esque. The feat that seemed possible

03:41only in the era of the Beatles' heyday, instead occurring in the year of our Lord 2024. But an

03:49arguably more amusing look is after just another couple games. Following game 26, while she just

03:56barely relinquished her hold atop the all-time rebounding leaderboard as her 311 boards trailed

04:02the rookie season outputs of Reese and Charles by 1 and 3, respectively, she established a comical

04:08scoring distance between herself and 14 Moore. With a lead of 80 points, that amounted to an

04:14advantage of 12.7%. Framed another way, her point total of 711 through 26 games was so high that no

04:23one else had ever even reached it through 29 games. Then we have our next major inflection point worth

04:30taking a glance at, which is after 32 games. Since all but three seasons have featured at least that many

04:36games per team, here's a pretty inclusive chart tantamount to the end of some earlier seasons.

04:42In it we see 24 Wilsons tied with 17 Jones for the second-most boards, while a 47-point outburst

04:48in game 32 got 06 Taurasi up to 805, a mark still 74 points and over 9% shy of the green dot.

04:59And the final number where it's still reasonable to look at raw totals would be through 34 games,

05:04a number reached by every team in all but 8 seasons. At that point, 24 Wilsons 406 rebounds

05:11would've stood alone atop the rest but for Reese's preternatural carnage she unleashed on the glass

05:16upon her entrance to the league. But she still maintains a scoring lead of more than 8% over

05:22the closest seasons authored by Taurasi and Moore. With Wilson's 2024 aces having played an expanded

05:28schedule of 40 games, at this point will calibrate to per-game averages to normalize the different

05:34season lengths from different years and take one final bird's eye view of her season, this time in

05:39totality compared to all other seasons by all other players through the league's first 28 years.

05:46While 24 Reese does occupy a rebounding tier of her own north of 13, 24 Wilson is basically in a dead heat

05:54for second at 11.87. Technically she's third, but she trails 18 Sylvia fouls by less than 14 thousandths of

06:03a board per game. Or in other words, here are some of the players who have never had a season averaging

06:09such a high rebounding number. And that kind of proficiency on the glass was of course married with

06:15the hyper-efficient bucket-getter's 26.87 points that she poured in per game. Not only is that the most

06:21ever by over a point and a half, but no one except Taurasi and Jewel Lloyd had ever even cracked 24.

06:28Then we have the sliding scale of the two elements together. No one with a comparable season on the

06:34glass had ever even been in her solar system as a scorer, and to the extent anyone had ever been in

06:39her solar system as a scorer, it wasn't anyone who was on her glass destruction level. For my money, I'd say

06:46the closest sliding scale competitors are probably a couple of Holdsclaw seasons and 07 Lauren Jackson,

06:52with her own 23 season right in that range, and there's obviously still plenty of northeastern

06:58real estate in between those names and 24 Wilson. But what I find arguably as delightful as the full

07:05season production is reveling in some cherry-picking at the game level. Now I could reduce myself to

07:12cherry-picking numbers that happen to be round under the flawed notion that they are inherently more

07:17profound than non-round numbers to use as statistical benchmarks. But I consider it common sense that if

07:23I'm going to pick cherries, I might as well opt to pick ones that better optimize my data sets rather

07:28than succumb to said flawed notion that often serves only to undermine them. We'll start by staying within

07:34the confines of the 2024 season and taking a look at the number of games with at least 26 points,

07:40where Wilson recorded 25 of them, with no one else in the league having even half as many.

07:45But it gets way funnier when we throw a rebounding threshold into the equation,

07:50and I know this because I combed through every plausible point-rebound combination. She's got a

07:56stranglehold up and down the board, so I'll choose a few of my favorites that produce the most outrageous

08:02data sets. Let's start with number of games recording at least 28 points and 8 boards, where she

08:08posted 19 of them when no one else had more than 3. And if you think it's impressive that her personal

08:14total accounted for 46% of the league-wide total, oh, just you wait. Up the rebound constraint to 10,

08:22and her 14 such games represent 61% of the entire league total. Crank it to a dozen, and her dozen such

08:30games represent 3 quarters of the entire league's output. And even that can be one-upped by upping

08:36the points by one. The final two we'll look at within just the 2024 season are number of games with

08:42at least 26 points and 15 boards, where she was responsible for 8 of the W's 10 such contests,

08:48and last but not least 28 points and 15 boards, where she bested the rest of her peers 6-1. Now we'll

08:56zoom out to assess how 24 Wilson stacks up across WNBA history in terms of most games in a season

09:02reaching certain benchmarks. And to be fair, we'll remove her inherent advantage of a longer schedule

09:07than those from earlier years, and pretend as though any season longer than 34 games ended after

09:13Game 34. And she still laps her competition. Wilson scored at least 28 points in 20 of her first 34 games

09:21that season, which is 54% more than runner-up Taurasi. And while she continues her domination as to the

09:28number of games reaching just about any point-rebound combo, I've got three favorites. Attach 10 rebounds

09:36to those 28 points, and her 14 such games are good for double that of runner-up 18 Liz Cambage.

09:43With the rebounding threshold increased to 11, she was still able to have 13 such games when no one

09:48else ever had more than 5 in a season, and with a 29th point tacked on, even that swells up to nearly

09:55triple the number anyone else had ever amassed. Hell, her 12 games with at least 28 points and 12

10:01boards in 2024 alone is a number no one but Tina Charles had surpassed in an entire career, and the

10:08same holds true for her 10 games with at least 29 in 12. There is no one else in WNBA history, and quite

10:16frankly barely any athlete's period for which there also exists any possible cherry-picking able to

10:22produce those sorts of discrepancies at anywhere near those sorts of degrees. And on top of all that,

10:28she was also her usual magnificent defensive self en route to her third consecutive first-team all-defense

10:35nod, with the league's best rim protector rejecting 2.58 shots per game. That didn't just lead the league

10:41that season, with only a couple others even close, but it was the highest average since 2016 Brittany

10:47Griner. Now while it's true Wilson's 2024 season looks like a slam dunk as the most dominant ever

10:54amongst rebound-gobbling bigs, there are of course other all-time greats among other player archetypes.

11:00There's wings such as Taurasi and Moore, assassins who could shoot the lights out and score at will from

11:05anywhere on the floor, and there's pure point guards like Sue Bird and Kaitlyn Clark, whose dynamic

11:11passing could masterfully set the table and run the show while still being able to create plenty for

11:16themselves. And that's in addition to some other fellow destroyers down low. But it is virtually

11:23impossible to argue that through the league's first 28 seasons, any WNBA player from any position

11:30played at a level approaching that of 2024 Asia Wilson. Though that's not exactly breaking any

11:36shocking news, and it appeared obvious as her season was unfolding, what is shocking is just how much

11:42separation she ultimately generated between herself and any other top contenders. Really, it's hard to

11:48make a case that anyone else has had a regular season that's even come close. After an MVP vote that

11:54carried about as much suspense as whether or not the anvil's gonna hit Wile E. Coyote,

11:59Wilson joined Cynthia Cooper from the league's inaugural season as the only WNBA players to

12:05ever unanimously win the award. And in the midst of said unanimous MVP season in the WNBA,

12:11she turned in an MVP performance at the Paris Olympics where her 19 points and 10 boards per game

12:17powered the USA to more golden glory. Heading into 2024, cases for the greatest all-time women's

12:24basketball player could be made for several other candidates headlined by such luminaries as Diana

12:29Taurasi, Lisa Leslie, Lauren Jackson, Maya Moore, Tamika Catchings, Candice Parker, Brianna Stewart,

12:37Cheryl Swoops, Swoops' Comets teammate Cynthia Cooper, and if you want to go old school, Cooper's teammate at

12:44the other USC, Cheryl Miller. But when you stack Wilson's 2024 campaign, that's pretty clearly the

12:51preeminent individual season in league history on top of her Mount Everest of pre-24 exploits. To me,

12:58it's tough to argue that didn't catapult her into the driver's seat of the greatest of all time

13:03conversation. And by the end of just her age 27 season too. As she adds the longevity of her prime

13:10years to her still budding career, that'll likely simply relegate everyone else in her rearview mirror

13:16to be further and further in the distance.

Category

Transcript

Recommended