Las Vegas Aces superstar center A'ja Wilson was named the unanimous 2024 Kia WNBA Most Valuable Player on Sep. 22. On Wednesday, Caitlin Clark was named as the 2024 Kia WNBA Rookie of the Year.
These two award-winning athletes faced off on four occasions during the 2024 WNBA season — twice in Las Vegas and twice in Indiana.
Wilson and the Aces made the trip to Indiana's Gainbridge Fieldhouse for back-to-back matchups against Clark and the Fever on Sep. 11 and Sep. 13.
While Las Vegas won both games to sweep the season series, Wilson didn't exactly enjoy her time playing in Indianapolis.
During a recent Q&A with ESPN's Tyler Tines, Wilson said she "dreaded" playing in front of Fever fans in Indiana.
"The WNBA has taken off the past few years, but it's weird to see it this year. It feels like a lot of Black women in the league have been criticized. Has that been a downer?" Tines asked.
"It really has, in my sense, because it feels like, it's not like we're timid, but it's like you don't want us to do stuff, you just don't want to hear the noise," Wilson said. "It strips us from the genuine [happiness] and pureness and love of the game. Just like, 'I don't even want to go down this road.' I know it's going to be some idiotic person that's going to talk crazy and then I have to continue to take the high road. That gets exhausting. That's something that I've really seen this year that I've never seen before... And you constantly have to live in that life for four months and over time it's just, 'Ugh.'
"I dreaded being in Indiana, not because it was like the city or nothing, it was just like, I just don't want no s--- to pop off."
The arrival of Clark as the WNBA's No. 1 overall pick came with a flood of new fans for the women's basketball game. This passionate fanbase delivered some electrifying atmospheres throughout the 2024 WNBA season. But according to Wilson and some other WNBA players, these fans weren't always the most welcoming.
Connecticut Sun star Alyssa Thomas more directly called out the Fever's fanbase after their first-round WNBA playoff series.
"In my 11-year career, I've never experienced the racial comments from the Indiana Fever fan base. It's unacceptable, honestly," Thomas said. "There's no place for it. We've been professional throughout the whole entire thing, but I've never been called the things that I've been called on social media."
The WNBA, Indiana Fever and Clark herself condemned these types of comments directed toward players.
"This year we see it more than ever and it sucks and I hope it just dies down. We're starting to lose the beauty of the game of basketball," Wilson concluded. "That's what I hate the most about it... Maybe because it's an election year, I don't know. These folks going crazy."
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