The 2023 WNBA season is officially at the three-quarters point of the largest schedule in league history. With about a month to go in the regular season, the W is hotly contested; teams are trying to rise up and stake their claim moving up the rungs into playoff contention. The top-flight contenders are duking it out in late-season tests against one another, honing themselves and collecting data for the playoffs.

Who stands out on the Most Valuable Player Ladder this far into the season?

Each week for the remainder of the regular season, catch up on the MVP race with Nekias Duncan and Mark Schindler as they release their Top 5 MVP Ladder for the week while highlighting one candidate’s individual case.

1. A’ja Wilson, Las Vegas Aces (24.3 ppg/10.1 rpg/1.6 apg/4.0 stocks per game)
2. Breanna Stewart, New York Liberty (22.7 ppg/8.1 rpg/3.5 apg/3.2 stocks per game; +1 spot)
3. Alyssa Thomas, Connecticut Sun (15.7 ppg/11.1 rpg/8.1 apg/2.5 stocks per game; -1 spot)
4. Satou Sabally, Dallas Wings (20.0 ppg/7.7 rpg/5.0 apg/2.9 stocks per game; +1 spot)
5. Napheesa Collier, Minnesota Lynx (21.7 ppg/8.3 rpg/2.1 apg/2.0 stocks per game; -1 spot)

***Stats listed are since the All-Star Game***

In light of a pair of matchups between the league’s two best teams – and our top-two MVP candidates – A’ja Wilson is our spotlight player this week.

A’ja Wilson is a lot of things. A champion. An MVP. A Defensive Player of the Year. An All-Star and All-WNBA player. Role model. A Bojangles enjoyer.

Let head coach Becky Hammon tell it, Wilson is … Catwoman? Spiderman?

Wait, huh?

Per Hammon, Wilson is “like a freakin’ cat” defensively, due to her ability to slither around bigs on the block and prevent them from generating fruitful looks. Wilson feels her awareness has grown from last year, shifting from an on-ball focus to being able to map out the entire floor. Between her entry pass steals and blindside blocks, Wilson is averaging a career-high 3.5 “stocks” – meaning steals (1.4) and blocks (2.1) combined.

Wilson has toggled between both frontcourt positions this year, acting as a weak-side roamer when playing next to Candace Parker or Kiah Stokes. When the Aces trend smaller, Wilson slots in at the 5, tasked with the balancing act of holding up on switches while also working back to the paint to provide some sort of interior presence.

Offensively, Hammon believes that Wilson’s “Spiderman hands” are the most underrated quality about her. It’s not easy, Hammon says, to play with someone like Chelsea Gray due to her ability to toss passes most people wouldn’t even think to try. You have to have your head on a swivel, and your hands prepared.

“She’s liable to hit you in the head,” Hammon says.

In general, Wilson’s ability to corral no looks, come down with entry passes in traffic, and keep possessions alive with offensive rebounds – she’s grabbing a career-high 2.1 offensive rebounds, despite the Aces ranking last in offensive rebound rate (rebounding 23.5% of their own misses) overall – factor into the best scoring season of her career. 

About that: Wilson’s averaging a career-high 21.2 points (4th in the league) despite logging 14.3 shot attempts – the second-lowest mark of her career (12.7 in 2019). It helps that Wilson is converting nearly 56% of her 2s. The mid-range & mid-post scoring remains elite, and her downhill effectiveness has gone to another level. While the three-ball hasn’t carried over from last season (37.3% on 2.3 attempts last year, 21.7% on 0.8 attempts this year), it hasn’t mattered because Wilson has generated threes the old-fashioned way. Per PBP Stats, Wilson leads the WNBA in And-1s (25). And beyond the And-1s, Wilson has drawn more shooting fouls (102) than anyone in the league.

To summarize, Wilson is having a career-best offensive season. She’s putting together a DPOY-caliber campaign on the other end. The Aces are more than 15 points per 100 possessions better with Wilson on the floor; a mark that’s on par (but slightly below) with Breanna Stewart’s plus-15.7 clip in New York.

Oh, it’s also worth noting Wilson is doing this on what is, statistically, the greatest (regular season) team in WNBA history. The 28-3 Aces currently have the highest offensive rating in league history (114.3) while also leading the league in defensive rating (96.7), net rating (plus-17.5), insert-efficiency-stat-here, and a host of other metrics. 

Wilson is, figuratively and literally, at the center of it all.