A’ja Wilson made WNBA history Sunday night, becoming the first player to score 1,000 points in the regular season. She reached the milestone on a jumper near the right elbow as part of a 29-point campaign to give the Aces a critical win over the Sun.
This season’s likely MVP Award winner got emotional with her teammates in the locker room after the game. “When I come into work and I see y’all, it changes my whole outlook on life, so I am so, so, so appreciative for y’all,” Wilson said.
As she etches her name into the league’s history books, the back-to-back champion is also barreling toward ever-growing financial success.
Wilson’s shoe with Nike, the A’One, is set to drop next spring, along with a line of signature apparel and slides. Wilson has had a say in the process from the jump: She wanted silk inside her hoodies specifically so people could avoid wearing bonnets in the airport, and added pearl designs to the shoes to honor her late grandmother, according to Boardroom. The terms of Wilson’s deal are not public, but she signed a contract extension with the Swoosh earlier this year, the outlet reported.
Wilson’s other largest endorsement is Gatorade. Both Gatorade and Nike Basketball posted tributes to the player Sunday night.
It’s safe to say Wilson, 28, is already bringing in millions of dollars from her endorsements—Nike signed Caitlin Clark to a reported $28 million deal—which greatly exceeds her $200,000 WNBA salary.
But as she’s making history in the scoring columns, Wilson has time on her side to reach another milestone: the WNBA’s first million-dollar contract.
This summer, the NBA and WNBA agreed to a new media-rights deal with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon Prime Video beginning in the fall of 2025 for the men and the summer of 2026 for the women. The deal will at least triple the value of the WNBA’s current one, and potentially could be roughly six times larger. That means the WNBA will have a lot more money to pay players. (Wilson’s teammate Jackie Young currently boasts the league’s highest annual salary of $252,450.)
At the same time, players have the opportunity at the end of this season to opt out of their current collective bargaining agreement and renegotiate a new one that would begin in the 2026 season, the same year as the new media-rights deal.
With the league bringing in new money, the union will likely negotiate the tripling or quadrupling of salaries—which could mean seven-figure deals for top players.
It’s unclear whether those kinds of contracts would be possible right away or get scaled up over a few years, as the NBA does with cap-smoothing (meaning the salary cap can’t increase by more than 10% per year to avoid another Kevin Durant–to-the-Warriors incident).
The salary cap under the WNBA’s current CBA increases by 3% each year, reaching $1.5 million in 2025. Tripling or quadrupling that for 2026 would certainly give enough room to handsomely pay players, and Wilson’s two-year extension with Las Vegas is up at the end of 2025, which means she’ll be part of the first crop of players to benefit from the new influx of cash.
The counterpoint here is that Wilson did not max out her salary for 2024 and 2025 to allow the Aces to sign the best talent. And hitting 1,000 points in the regular season is just one of countless accolades she’s accumulated over the years.
Whether Wilson reaches $1 million or falls short—voluntarily or not—remains to be seen, but she will undoubtedly sign a deal bigger than the league has currently seen. And after the season she’s had on top of two consecutive championships, her signature shoe, and an Olympic Gold medal, it’s hard to argue Wilson shouldn’t be first in line for that milestone as well.
