July 31, 2024
Locked On Women’s Basketball: A’ja Wilson’s Olympic dominance
By The Next
'It's a 3-point shooting team around the best player in the game, A'ja Wilson'
On the latest episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, host Howard Megdal sits down with the Next’s Matthew Walter to discuss A’ja Wilson‘s leadership on Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Megdal and Walter compare her performances on Team USA to her role on the Las Vegas Aces. They also reflect on the un-retirement of Tiffany Hayes, the skills possessed by Chelsea Gray, and more.
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Megdal and Walter start out the show by discussing Hayes’s un-retirement. “Tiffany Hayes is a busy person,” Walter explains. “And that’s the big reason why she decided to retire from the WNBA.” She has a clothing line, a headset company, she opened a basketball gym, and more. But a big reason she decided to return to the game, as Walter later explains, is that the Las Vegas Aces gave her the freedom to do many things. “Allowing her to be flexible is one of the biggest reasons she came back and signed with the Aces,” Walter says.
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Later on, Megdal and Walter elaborate on Chelsea Gray, an Aces star who is currently overseas with Team USA in the Paris Olympics. Megdal asks Walter if he was confident that Gray would be able to perform well in this Olympic games. “At the beginning of the season, I would’ve said probably not, ” Walter admits. “But once she played her first start and found her offensive game, the answer was yes.”
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Megdal then asks Walter about A’ja Wilson, the dominant force of Team USA. Walter reflects on the trifecta of Wilson, Gray, and Diana Taurasi, who showed, in games like the team’s victory over Japan, just how talented this team is on an international level. Per Walter, “it’s a 3-point shooting team around the best player in the game, A’ja Wilson.”
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