Well before she won her third WNBA title, fourth MVP, third Defensive Player of the Year, and second Finals MVP, A’ja Wilson reminded me of the player who first made me fall in love with basketball: Michael Jordan. Like most kids who grew up in Chicago in the ‘80s and ‘90s, so many of my memories of growing up are intertwined with the Bulls winning six titles, and what I’ve seen from Wilson is reminiscent of Jordan, with one caveat: she’s done it her own way.
After the Las Vegas Aces won their third title on Friday night with a four-game sweep of the Phoenix Mercury, Wilson was asked about the comparison, and was clearly surprised.
“Wow. I still got a little bit more winning to do before you put me in that conversation with him,” Wilson said. “But when you’re compared to greats, when you’re compared to legends, that means you’re doing something right.”
When you look at Wilson and Jordan, it’s easy to see the similarities. It starts with winning, of course. By age 29, they both had three championships, plus the Rookie of the Year award and Defensive Player of the Year (Wilson has three, Jordan had one). All-Star nods were basically yearly occurrences.
The NBA postseason is longer than the WNBA’s, and the men’s games are eight minutes longer, so it’s not totally fair to compare statistics like scoring or rebounds. (In case you’re wondering: In his postseason career, Jordan averaged 33.4 points, 6.4 rebounds and 5.7 assists in 41.8 minutes per game; Wilson has averaged 21.3 points, 9.9 rebounds and 2.4 assists in 35.2 playoff minutes per game. Jordan won 119 of 145 total career playoff games, while Wilson has won 35 of 55.)
While their stats may not be easily comparable, there’s one easy way to see how they’re similar on the court: they both want the ball in difficult situations. Finals Game 3 was a perfect snapshot of that. Aces head coach Becky Hammon went with the “Give A’ja the ball and get out of the way” offensive strategy to end the tightly contested game, and it worked. Guarded by two of the Mercury’s best defenders in Alyssa Thomas and DeWanna Bonner, Wilson stepped back, pulled up and sank the jump shot to seal the game for Las Vegas.
In one of many Jordan examples, the Bulls faced the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the 1989 playoffs. With time about to expire in the decisive Game 5, Jordan made his iconic, buzzer-beating jump shot over Craig Ehlo to get the win. Afterward, Bulls coach Doug Collins said his plan was, “Give the ball to Michael, everybody get the f*** out of the way.”
Michael Jordan reacts after hitting the game-winning basket over Cleveland’s Craig Ehlo in Game 5 of the NBA playoffs on May 7, 1989. (Ed Wagner Jr./Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(Chicago Tribune via Getty Images)
Both Wilson and Jordan are also known for holding themselves and their teammates accountable. As we learned from the documentary “The Last Dance,” Jordan’s methods were less than kind.
“Man, I see a screaming devil. You make a mistake, he’s gonna scream at you, he’s gonna belittle you. He demands almost perfection,” Horace Grant, Jordan’s teammate through three of the Bulls’ championships, said. “Man, when you see your leader working extremely hard in practice, you feel like, ‘Oh, man, if I don’t give it my all, I shouldn’t be here.’”
Wilson has created a similar kind of accountability within the Aces. Las Vegas struggled for much of the 2025 season, the low point being a 53-point loss to the Lynx in early August. She sent a text to her teammates, according to ESPN’s Michael Voepel:
“If you weren’t embarrassed from yesterday, then don’t come into this gym. You’re not needed or wanted here. We need the mindset to shift, because that was embarrassing.”
It worked, as the next game marked the start of a 16-game win streak that gave the Aces the No. 2 in the playoffs, setting the table for this year’s championship.
“We just continue to understand and hold each other accountable for big moments and don’t hang our heads on the mistake, maybe in the moment, but just keep encouraging each other,” Wilson said after Game 3. “And I think that just blind trust comes from just understanding that your teammate is going to hold you accountable, but they’re also going to be there for you, and they’re going to be the first one to root you on in these moments.”
Wilson’s approach to accountability comes with a kindness that may not have been present in Jordan’s gyms. She said the Aces spent time together off the court as much as possible throughout the season, which helped build the strong relationships that became the foundation of their championship run.
For Jordan’s Bulls, that team bonding time was often spent together on golf courses and in high-stakes poker games on the team plane. For Wilson’s’ Aces, it was movie nights and escape rooms.
“It’s just banking equity,” she said. “That’s the huge thing, is making sure that they understand that I trust them, but I know that they’re going to trust me as well. And so when it comes to just them trusting me with the basketball and getting them to their spots, it’s the same thing they do for me. I want to make sure that I can kind of show that to them as well. And so when it shows up in assists, great, but if it shows up in just cheering for each other and uplifting each other, that’s what it really is all about. And it’s been a long, long year, and we’ve done tons of things to get close to each other, to have that trust. So it’s good that it’s showing now here in the Finals.”
As Wilson said, she has much more basketball to play, and probably more championships and MVPs to win. But it’s easy to see just how close 22 on the Aces is to 23 on the Bulls.
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