It’s time for our WNBA Tuesday miniseries return for the 2025 season awards “ceremony”—which we haven’t done since late February for the 2024 season, of course. The season just ended with a sweep in the Finals (see below), so we can do our assessment once again, calling it like we see it and not necessarily the same as others saw it. That’s the fun thing about what we do here: revisionist sports history (in real time).

2025 WNBA MVP: A’ja Wilson, F/C, Las Vegas (original); Aliyah Boston, C/F, Indiana (revised)

Las Vegas Aces superstar A’ja Wilson won her fourth MVP vote after topping the league in both Player Efficiency Rating (33.4) and Win Shares (9.5). While Wilson was certainly the best player in the league, we’re not sold on her value here since she played with guard Jackie Young, who also finished Top 10 in both PER (eighth) and WS (seventh) rankings. Meanwhile, other legitimate candidates did not have that kind of help.

With Wilson and Young, the Aces still finished four games behind the Minnesota Lynx and star forward Napheesa Collier (PER 30.2, WS 8.3), who posted the second-best sabermetric marks in the sport, despite missing 11 games to injury. Can someone who missed a quarter of the season be the MVP? We’re not sure, despite Collier’s impressively dominant .310 WS/40 effort. We have to table this for now to investigate more.

Another candidate here is Indiana Fever frontcourt force Aliyah Boston (4th PER, 6th WS), who won the 2023 ROTY nod from the voters and us. Yes, her team finished just 24-20, in the sixth place, but the Fever suffered a lot of injuries this season and still managed to improve on its record last season—thanks to Boston. Without her, they don’t make the postseason, period. The same cannot be said for Collier, in truth.

There’s also Phoenix Mercury F Alyssa Thomas (3rd PER, 5th WS) and Atlanta Dream F Brionna Jones (7th PER, 6th WS), the final two candidates here worth discussion. The Dream tied with the Aces for the second-best record in the WNBA, while the Mercury finished three games behind those two teams. Boston (7.1), Thomas (6.9), and Jones (6.8) finished fourth, fifth, and sixth in WS, but there’s another player to note.

Jones also had the help of the teammate Allisha Gray (7.1 WS), whereas Thomas and Boston were solo performers. So, we think this comes down to the Mercury and Fever players. And the Indiana star had the higher WS for the “worst” team here in this specific analysis. To us, that seals the deal on value: basically a Top 5 player carrying the load for the sixth-place team that was constantly shuffling its lineup to stay alive.

2025 WNBA ROTY: Paige Bueckers, G, Dallas (original, confirmed)

Three rookies finished in the Top 5 for their class in both PER and WS: Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers (1st, 1st); Washington Mystics G Sonia Citron (4th, 2nd); and Mystics F Kiki Iriafen (3rd, 3rd). Both Dallas and Washington finished well out of the playoff race, and the two Mystics cancel each other out. Bueckers won the ROTY vote, so we will just confirm her award win despite the last-place finish; that wasn’t her fault.

2025 WNBA DPOY: Wilson & Alanna Smith, F, Minnesota (original-tie); Wilson (revised)

Wilson (3.3 DWS) and Lynx F Alanna Smith (2.9) tied for the vote win here, and we don’t know why. Not only did the Aces star have a better DWS mark, but Smith had two teammates above 2.5 DWS, too, and in the Top 7 for the WNBA as a whole. Meanwhile, Wilson did pull this one off all by her lonesome, without any Top 10 help from teammates. She deserved this award all on her own, and it’s a shame voters missed it.

2025 WNBA FINALS MVP: Wilson (original, confirmed)

The Aces won their third title in four seasons by posting a 9-3 record across three rounds, including a 4-0 sweep of the Mercury in the Finals. Las Vegas went the distance in the best-of-three first round with Seattle and the best-of-five semifinals with Indiana, so this was no cake walk until the end. And even then, the sweep was decided by a total of 29 points in four matchups, with two games decided by one possession.

Leading the way were Wilson (2.5 WS) and Young (2.3), but Wilson stood out as the only player on the Aces roster who played above-average defense in the postseason. Young was more “valuable” on offense despite Wilson’s PER edge (30.5 to 24.1). Overall, it was Wilson just dominating here and leading by example. It’s crazy to think she won the MVP, DOPY, and Finals MVP votes all in the same year, really. That’s incredible.