A’ja Wilson won the 2026 Kia WNBA MVP on Thursday in New York, her fifth, which is more than anyone has ever won. She took 65 of 74 first-place votes and finished with 713 points. Nobody serious is arguing about the winner.
The argument is further down the ballot, where Caitlin Clark finished fourth with 212 points and appeared on only 55 of the 74 ballots. Nineteen voters left the best passing season in league history off their top five entirely.
Wilson Earned This One Outright
Wilson averaged 26.2 points, 9.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.9 blocks in 41 games while shooting 52.7 percent from the floor and 40.4 percent from three. She led the league in scoring for the third straight year and in blocks for the fifth straight year, and her 30.4 efficiency rating was the best in the WNBA.
She is also the first player in league history to win three MVPs in a row. Cynthia Cooper went back to back in 1997 and 1998 and nobody else had even done that. Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson are stuck on three apiece. At 30, Wilson is already in a tier by herself.
The timing is cruel. Las Vegas finished 31-13 as the No. 3 seed and is now down 2-0 to the Golden State Valkyries in the semifinals. Game 3 is Friday night in Las Vegas, and Wilson could be collecting the most valuable player trophy for a team that is one loss from going home.
The Clark Ballots Are Hard to Defend
Clark averaged 22.3 points and 8.3 assists and became the first player in WNBA history to average at least 20 and 8 in a season. Indiana averaged a league record 96 points per game with her running it. Kelsey Mitchell, her teammate, set the league’s single-season scoring record with 1,086 points and finished third in the MVP vote at 287 points.
You can build a reasonable case for Olivia Miles over Clark. Miles finished second with 442 points and Minnesota had the best record in the league. You can build a case for Mitchell on volume. What you cannot build is a case for leaving Clark off a five-deep ballot while her teammate sets a scoring record largely because of the attention and the passing Clark generates.
Clark’s distribution tells the story: one first-place vote, six seconds, 20 thirds, 16 fourths, 12 fifths. That is not a split opinion. That is a group of voters who had her near the top and another group who did not have her at all.
The Award Is Fine, the Electorate Is Not
None of this diminishes Wilson, who would have won in a landslide under any voting system. It does raise a fair question about a 74-person panel that can produce 19 blank spots for a player who just did something no one in the league’s 30-year history had done.
The WNBA has spent two seasons enjoying the biggest audience boom in its existence. A voting body that cannot agree Clark belongs in a top five is going to keep handing that audience a reason to distrust its awards.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
