L ife in the WNBA was very different when A’ja Wilson was a rookie. Back in 2018, the 6-foot-4 Las Vegas Aces center was flying coach to games, playing in half-empty arenas and 2,000-seat auditoriums, and jetting off to China when the season ended to supplement her $52,000 salary. When it came to sponsor or media opportunities, “rookie A’ja absolutely said yes to everything,” Wilson, who recently turned 30, tells Forbes . “I felt like I had to make sure I struck while the iron was hot, get everything now, because you really didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Her unprecedented career on the court since—winning three championships and a record four MVP Awards, with a fifth widely expected this season—has coincided with a transformational time in the history of the league. In the last three years, WNBA viewership and sponsorship have nearly tripled, and salaries for top players have gone up more than 500%, thanks to a new collective bargaining agreement signed in May. In addition to the $1.4 million Wilson will earn from the Aces this season, Forbes estimates she will earn more than $5 million from a sponsor portfolio that includes Nike, Chase, PepsiCo and AT&T.

Now, with her own signature sneaker, a New York Times bestselling memoir, a name-drop in a Cardi B song , a voice role in the Steph Curry–produced movie GOAT and appearances on everything from the Wheaties box to The Tonight Show to Hot Ones , Wilson thinks the time for modesty is over.

“When it comes to the WNBA, I feel like I shouldn’t have to introduce myself,” she says. “Whether you like me or hate me, you know who I am.”

Still, earning the respect accorded to top male athletes has proved challenging. Increased WNBA attention has more often focused on the league’s racial or gender dynamics than the actual basketball, highlighted by embarrassing incidents such as fans throwing sex toys on the court during games and ex-NBA players claiming to identify as female in an attempt to join the league.

Wilson’s agent, Jade-Li English of Klutch Sports Group, says she has had to have “difficult conversations” with brands to make sure they “understand who she is as a Black woman.” English says she asks them, “‘Would you go to a LeBron James and approach a partnership with him the same way that you would approach A’ja Wilson?’”

Although Wilson has managed to mostly stay above the noise and controversy, even a benign comment last December about the surge in WNBA popularity attributed to rising star Caitlin Clark—“Let’s not lose the history. It was erased for a minute. And I don’t like that”—became fodder for a firestorm of racially tinged backlash.

“They’re trying to project these types of issues onto us because they feel like we’re just easy to clamp onto, because we are women that have been at the forefront of so many different issues,” Wilson says. “I’m like, let’s not let that pull the attention away from how great our league is and how far we’ve come in 30 years.”

Ben Vonwiller, head of global sports at McKinsey & Co. and the co-author of a 2025 report on the $2.5 billion opportunity in women’s sports, says that brands see WNBA players as role models, for far more than the quality of their jump shots. One of the top two reasons given by sponsors for increased investment was a desire to champion inclusion and gender equality in their brand messaging. “They value the power of the female athletes, their character, their values, their reputation, their personality,” he says. “They play a very significant role both in fan engagement and also in the excitement of brand marketers to participate.”

Wilson takes the responsibility of being a trailblazer very seriously. It’s why, at 27, she wrote her bestselling memoir, Dear Black Girls: How to Be True to You , which recounted her childhood as one of the few Black students at a private school in Columbia, South Carolina, learning to play basketball from her father, Roscoe Wilson Jr., a former overseas pro (and lover of the Steely Dan song “Aja,” which inspired her name). Wilson led the University of South Carolina to its first national championship in 2017, and then the Aces to their first WNBA title in 2022. Nike offered her a signature shoe soon after, and the A’One sold out its initial stock within minutes of release in 2025.

During the tense CBA negotiations over the past year, Wilson realized that her influence extended to other WNBA players, many of whom looked to her for leadership. “I’m not going to lie, that is pretty powerful,” Wilson says, knowing how monumental the salary boosts would be to future generations of players. “I think everyone kind of expected us to fall after the first deadline. Because we didn’t budge, it gave us a sense of, no, we are going to stand up for what we believe in and understand that we are the business.”

In the end, the players negotiated for minimum salary increases from around $66,000 per year to more than $270,000, with supermax salaries tied to 20% of team salary caps, which are expected to increase from $1.4 million this year to $2.4 million by the end of the six-year term.

Those payouts are still fractional compared with the NBA—whose lowest-paid players earn just under $1.4 million—or even women’s tennis , where top players can earn more than $10 million from prize money alone, but Wilson says the increases have eased tensions in the locker room. “I’m greedy, so of course I’m like, ‘Give me more,’” she says. “But I’m really happy with where we are.”

Lately, Wilson has been trying to figure out how to extend her position as the best women’s basketball player of all-time to ventures outside basketball, where she still trails Clark and a handful of other WNBA players in off-court earnings. The A’Three sneaker is likely coming, and she also runs the scented candle brand Burnt Wax Candle Company alongside her mother. Away from the WNBA, she is expec­ted to marry Miami Heat forward Bam Adebayo, cemen­ting their position as one of sports’ power couples.

“You want to be great on the court, but off the court as well, you want to have a presence. And that’s something that you kind of develop over time,” she says. “One thing about greatness is it never hides; it always shines. So hopefully I can shine bright so everyone can see.”