Reigning WNBA MVP A'ja Wilson gets statue for work on & off court
After a WNBA season unlike any other, a season of activism, protest and stunning electoral results in the midst of a pandemic bubble, 2020 league MVP A'ja Wilson Monday became one of the very few women athletes in the United States to be immortalized with a statue when her alma mater, the University of South Carolina, did the honors.
Wilson, 24, joins a select few women to be commemorated in such a permanent way, including trailblazing tennis legend Althea Gibson at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, New York, and in Newark, New Jersey; Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summitt in Knoxville, Martin and Clarksville, Tennessee; Olympic gold medalist Wilma Rudolph in Clarksville; and U.S. soccer star Brandi Chastain outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
While the statue celebrates her immense skill on the basketball court, where she led the Gamecocks to the 2017 NCAA title and became the No. 1 pick in the 2018 WNBA Draft by the Las Vegas Aces, Wilson has become a force in the WNBA's push for social justice through the Black Lives Matter movement and the Georgia Senate run-offs.
It was WNBA players' early, eye-opening support for Rev. Raphael Warnock that not only allowed him to advance to the run-offs but also was crucial in his Jan. 5 upset of Atlanta Dream co-owner and appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler for one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats.
“I know people say, `Shut up and dribble, stay out of politics,' but it's really not about that,” Wilson said in a phone interview prior to the statue unveiling. “It's about doing the right thing. (Police brutality) can happen to my dad, my brother, my mom, myself. When it hits close to home, you want to make it matter.”
She was heartened when her teammates and WNBA colleagues spoke as one during the turbulent summer of 2020.
“It was actually a lot easier when the league, the WNBA, is behind you 100%, and allows you to speak your mind and speak your truth,” she said. “That was the cherry on top. To have these women come together and stand for one thing and be in the forefront of that thing always, the issue of police brutality and Black Lives Matter, it just goes to show how powerful our league is, and I was just so happy to be one of the young voices, kind of tagging along, to give it my point of view.
“At the end of the day, we get the job done. We fight for something. Look at what we do off the court.”
As a young girl, Wilson attended a predominantly white school in South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flew over the statehouse. In fourth grade, one of her friends invited her to a birthday party, with a caveat: she would need to stay outside.
“She told me her father didn't like Black people,” Wilson said. “I still remember it like it was yesterday. Obviously, I didn't go to the party.”
For The Players' Tribune last July, Wilson wrote an essay entitled “Dear Black Girls.” It read, in part:
“At the end of the day, Black girls all across the country need to hear the truth. They need to know what they're in for. Most of the time, we don't get `the talk.' The boys get that. They get told about how they're seen as a threat to police, about how to navigate the world, about how to just survive.
“I hate it that we have to become a hashtag in order for society to be like, “Oh, we love our Black queens! Yaasss!”
On Monday, fittingly on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when Wilson stood outside South Carolina's Colonial Life Arena at the unveiling of the statue of herself, she said later that she envisioned “little Black girls” coming by, looking up at the statue and seeing someone who looks like them. “They have so many role models now.”
One of best of them will be standing right there in front of them.