A'ja Riyadh Wilson born August 8, 1996 is an American professional basketball player for the Las Vegas Aces of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Wilson was born to Roscoe Jr. and Eva Wilson. She said on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! that she was named for her father's favorite song, Aja by Steely Dan. Her middle name Riyadh came from the Saudi Arabian capital where Aja's maternal aunt was deployed in Operation Desert Storm. Wilson's father, Roscoe Wilson, Jr., played college basketball at Benedict College and professionally in Europe for 10 seasons. Wilson's mother, Eva Rakes Wilson, worked as a court stenographer and for the Richland County School District 1 in Columbia, South Carolina. Wilson has an older brother, Renaldo, who also played professional basketball overseas. Wilson spent her grade school and high school years as one of the few black students in Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, a southern Columbia private school. She was number 22 and played as a forward. After finishing as a runner-up in her junior year, Wilson led Heathwood Hall to the 2014 state championship as a senior. Her 35 points, 15 rebounds, and five blocks per game as a senior made her the National High School player of the year in 2014, a Parade and McDonald's All-American, and the number 1 rated ESPN HoopGurlz prospect in 2014. Wilson committed to play for Dawn Staley at the University of South Carolina. Wilson played for the South Carolina Gamecocks in college, and helped lead the Gamecocks to their first NCAA Women's Basketball Championship in 2017, and won the NCAA basketball tournament Most Outstanding Player award. In 2018, she won a record third straight SEC Player of the Year award, leading South Carolina to a record fourth straight SEC Tournament Championship, becoming the all-time leading scorer in South Carolina women's basketball history, and was a consensus first-team All-American for the third consecutive season. Wilson swept all National Player of the Year awards (Wade, AP, Honda, USBWA, Wooden, and Naismith) as the best player in Women's College basketball for 2018. In the 2018 WNBA draft, she was drafted first overall by the Aces. Wilson won her first WNBA MVP in 2020, as well as her first Olympic Gold medal in the 2020 Summer Olympics. In 2022, Wilson helped lead the Aces to their first title in franchise history, a feat she repeated in 2023 while earning Finals MVP. On July 7, 2024, in a matchup against the Dallas Wings, she became the Aces' all time leading scorer in franchise history. She is also a New York Times best-selling author. In August 2018, Wilson signed with the Shaanxi Red Wolves of the Women's Chinese Basketball Association for the 2018–19 off-season. In late March 2020, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government postponed the 2020 Summer Olympics until the summer of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 21, 2021, Wilson was named to the 12-player roster for Team USA for the 2020 summer Olympics. She and Team USA went on to win the gold medal in the tournament, defeating Japan 90–75 in the final. In June 2024, Wilson was again named to the US women's Olympic team to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics in France, alongside fellow Aces teammates, Chelsea Gray, Kelsey Plum, and Jackie Young. Wilson is a Christian and grew up with strong ties to the religion (one of her grandfathers was a minister).
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