Culture
A’ja Wilson breaks WNBA single-season points record, passes Jewell Loyd’s mark of 939
At the end of the 2023 WNBA season, after the Las Vegas Aces had captured their second consecutive title and A’ja Wilson earned Finals MVP, Wilson had a message.
“Whoever you are out there that voted me fourth (for MVP), thank you. Thank you so much,” Wilson said during the team’s championship rally. “I wanna say I appreciate you, ’cause that just means that I got a lot more work to do.”
Although the 2024 Aces have disappointed relative to expectation, Wilson has not. Just as she vowed last October, Wilson returned an improved player in her seventh WNBA season.
Already a two-time MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, Wilson is now the record holder for the most points in a single season. Against the Indiana Fever — and rookie Caitlin Clark, who could challenge these marks in the not-so-distant future — Wilson scored her 941st point in the second quarter, breaking Jewell Loyd’s single-season mark of 939 set in 2023.
941 buckets in 2024 and counting…
Most Points Scored In A WNBA Single Season belongs to A’JA WILSON #WelcometotheW pic.twitter.com/ysR3DWubVz
— WNBA (@WNBA) September 11, 2024
Many single-season WNBA records have been broken over 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, 30, then the year after that, 32, which lasted through 2002. The regular season was 34 games long from 2003-19, during which time Diana Taurasi set the scoring standard that lasted until last season.
Nevertheless, Wilson’s statistics don’t require the extra games to break records. Through 34 games, Wilson had 929 points, more than anyone in league history, comfortably ahead of Taurasi’s 860 in 2006. Wilson was averaging 27.3 points entering Wednesday’s game.
She needs only 83 total points over the final five games to post the highest-scoring average in a WNBA season, passing Taurasi’s mark of 25.3.
In addition to points, Wilson is also leading 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 want it to ever get lost on how good (A’ja) is,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said before the Fever game. “She just does it all. She’s in the middle of a run that sometimes I want to shake her and say, do you know how good you are? But then I don’t want to shake her because I don’t want to wake her up. She can just stay in whatever zone she’s in.”
That zone put Wilson in lofty historical company. Through seven seasons of her career, Wilson is also threatening Taurasi’s mark as the league’s all-time leading scorer. She has a better scoring average (20.9 versus 20.7) at this age, and thanks to the WNBA’s expanded schedule, Wilson can get to Taurasi’s total scoring output in fewer seasons.
For now, Wilson and the Aces only have their eyes on a third title. But the all-time great can’t help but set individual records in the process.
Required reading
(Photo: Justin Casterline / NBAE via Getty Images)
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
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