They forged a bond, and Staley and Wilson still talk regularly. “I send an encouraging text
message. Sometimes they need a little censorship,” Staley says. “But she’s a thinker and a perfectionist. She wants the work that she puts in to
have results.”
Under Staley, Wilson led the Gamecocks to a national championship—the first in school history—and became a three-time consensus All-American. Her dominance in college raised the program’s recruiting profile significantly, and the Gamecocks are now perennial Final Four fixtures. (In 2021, when Wilson was just 24 years old, the school erected a statue in her honor—this on the campus where Wilson’s grandmother couldn’t set foot as a girl in the segregated South.)
Wilson entered the WNBA draft in 2018. The unproven Las Vegas Aces—a team that had just relocated from San Antonio after finishing last in the league—had the first pick, and with Wilson they quickly turned their fortunes around. The team has won three league titles in the past four seasons, and Wilson has herself accumulated enough hardware to stock a slot machine: four MVP and three Defensive Player of the Year awards, not to mention two Olympic gold medals as a member of Team USA.
But for someone like Wilson, who has suffered from bouts of anxiety and self-doubt, the relentless WNBA season—44 games in four months—can be overwhelming. A month into the season, Wilson’s team was faltering and she was shouldering the pressure. During a break in the action in one early game, when Wilson wasn’t shooting well, Hammon walked out onto the court and simply gave her a hug: “I could just feel the weight,” Hammon remembers. The Aces bottomed out with a 53-point loss to the Minnesota Lynx in early August. “Never lost that bad in my life,” Wilson says with a grimace, “and it was on national television.”
The drubbing triggered something. “A’ja is a look, sound, feel person,” Staley says. “When they went through the lowest point, it didn’t feel right to her. So she activated.” And not just her. Wilson’s veteran teammates—including Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young, and Jewell Loyd, all of whom already had multiple titles to their name—went on an implausible tear, going 25–3 through the postseason. Wilson sank her triumphant shot in the finals and got named the series MVP.
After the celebration, Wilson was drained. “The outside world looking in, everyone’s just like, ‘Oh, you had an amazing shot! You won the championship, you should be on top of the world!’ ” Wilson says. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah, for that moment.’ ” Around Thanksgiving, the reality of what she’d been through hit her: “I finally got to unpack the emotional toll that it took on me, the spiritual toll it took on me, the physical toll.”
The toll had gotten to her before. After the Aces got swept by the Seattle Storm in the 2020 finals, Wilson suffered a panic attack while on vacation with her parents. She started going to therapy and working on “protecting her peace,” a principle Staley instilled in her in college—focusing on the people and spiritual practices that help keep her grounded. “She’s not a Bible-thumper,” Roscoe says, but “A’ja is very deep in her faith.”
