At the end of the 2023 WNBA season, after the Las Vegas Aces won their second straight title and A’ja Wilson won the Finals MVP award, Wilson had a message.

“Whoever you are that voted me fourth (for MVP), thank you. Thank you very much,” Wilson said during the team’s championship rally. “I want to say I appreciate you, because that just means I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

While the 2024 Aces have disappointed by expectations, Wilson has not. As she promised last October, Wilson returned an improved player in her seventh WNBA season.

Already a two-time MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, Wilson now holds the record for most points in a season. Against the Indiana Fever — and rookie Caitlin Clark, who could challenge those records in the not-so-distant future — Wilson scored her 941st point in the second quarter to break Jewell Loyd’s single-season record of 939 points set in 2023.

941 buckets in 2024 and counting…

Most points scored in a single WNBA season goes to A’JA WILSON #WelcometotheW photo.twitter.com/ysR3DWubVz

— WNBA (@WNBA) September 11, 2024

Many of the WNBA’s single-season records have been broken in the past two years since the regular season expanded to 40 games. When the league debuted in 1997, the season was 28 games long. The next year, it was 30, and the year after that, 32, which lasted until 2002. The regular season was 34 games long from 2003-19, during which time Diana Taurasi set the scoring standard that stood until last season.

Still, Wilson’s stats don’t need more games to break records. Through 34 games, Wilson has 929 points, more than anyone in league history, well ahead of Taurasi’s 860 in 2006. Wilson was averaging 27.3 points entering Wednesday’s game.

She needs just 83 points in the final five games to tie for the highest scoring average in a WNBA season, surpassing Taurasi’s record of 25.3.

In addition to scoring, Wilson also leads the league in defensive rebounds, blocks, turnover percentage and win shares. It’s been a tour de force for the runaway MVP favorite.

“I don’t ever want it to be lost on how good (A’ja) is,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said before the Fever game. “She just does everything. She’s in the middle of a run and sometimes I want to shake her and say, ‘Do you know how good you are?’ But I don’t want to shake her because I don’t want to wake her up. She can just stay in the zone she’s in.”

That zone puts Wilson in lofty historical company. Through seven seasons of her career, Wilson also has threatened Taurasi’s position as the league’s all-time leading scorer. She has a better scoring average at that age (20.9 versus 20.7), and the WNBA’s expanded schedule allows Wilson to reach Taurasi’s total scoring potential in fewer seasons.

For now, Wilson and the Aces are only aiming for a third title. But the greatest of all can’t help but set individual records.

Required reading

(Photo: Justin Casterline/NBAE via Getty Images)