The 2026 WNBA regular season is over, the seeds have been determined, and teams are now gearing up for a playoff that officially tips off on Sunday. As expected, the MVP conversation is louder than ever, with A’ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, Olivia Miles, Kelsey Mitchell, and Breanna Stewart all at the forefront of what has been one of the most competitive individual races in recent memory.

You might expect an Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark supporter like WNBA analyst Rachel DeMita to lean toward Clark as her MVP choice. But as it appears, she can place her no higher than second, because the consistency A’ja Wilson has displayed all season, and the weight of importance she carries for the Las Vegas Aces, is simply too much to ignore. 

“With seeing the last four games of the season, my MVP is A’ja Wilson,” DeMita said on Saturday’s episode of her Courtside Club podcast. “The Aces, again, on paper, are not necessarily the greatest team in the league. They’ve lost players throughout the season. And A’ja Wilson just continues to show up and dominate. And I think that’s something that deserves to be rewarded.” 

In her last four games, Wilson has produced elite numbers, with at least seven rebounds in each game and 111 total points.

“She’s also been very consistent throughout this entire season, DeMita added. ” “There aren’t many other players, even when you’re talking about this MVP discussion, who have been as consistent as A’ja. She hasn’t had very many stinker games. And so for that reason, A’ja Wilson is once again my MVP. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wins it.” 

Her season average remains 26+ points a game with 3+ assists and nearly 10 rebounds expected per game as well.

“Number two, I have Caitlin Clark. I think that’s one thing for the Fever: they didn’t have a strong push at the end of the season. They weren’t even able to get home-court advantage. That ultimately hurts Caitlin’s chances and Kelsey’s chances,” DeMita added.

A significant part of DeMita’s reasoning centers on how the Indiana Fever finished the regular season. They failed to secure home-court advantage, dropping two of their last three games and entering the playoffs as the No. 6 seed.

Their 86-66 blowout loss against the Minnesota Lynx in the regular-season finale on Thursday was particularly difficult to overlook. Clark finished that game with a career-low two points on 1-of-12 shooting, and Mitchell had her lowest scoring output of the season in the same game.

While Clark has had a handful of similarly difficult nights, like her six-point showing against the Portland Fire in May, and a nine-point performance against the Sparks in July, Wilson has been remarkably immune to that kind of variance. Outside of a 15-point game against the Washington Mystics in August, Wilson scored at least 16 points in every single game she played this season. That level of floor and consistency is exactly what DeMita is pointing to.

The MVP case, of course, extends well beyond scoring, even if Wilson leads the league there too with a 26.2 points per game average. But she also ranks first in the league in blocks at 1.9 per game, and her 9.4 rebounds per game places her in the top five. Caitlin Clark, for her part, is second in the league in assists at 8.3 per game and ranks third in scoring at 22.3, statistics that represent an extraordinary individual season by any objective measure.

Now, the two MVP candidates will go head-to-head in the first playoff round as the Indiana Fever take on the third-seeded Aces in a best-of-three series.

But for DeMita, Wilson’s statistical dominance is simply broader, and the degree to which she carries the Aces makes her contribution more singularly important. DeMita has even gone so far as to describe the team as “Las Vegas A’ja,” to showcase the franchise’s dependence on Wilson’s production on a nightly basis. 

Of course, Clark is also unquestionably a central figure for the Fever. But the argument is that Wilson means more to her team, relative to the overall quality of the roster around her.

DeMita is, however, not the only notable voice who is now behind A’ja Wilson for the WNBA MVP award. WNBA legend Sue Bird, in her recent podcast, also has A’ja Wilson as her first choice, above Olivia Miles, who she previously championed.

What, however, makes all of this particularly interesting is that the MVP race is not yet fully decided. A’ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark will face each other directly in the first round of the playoffs, a series that will inevitably shape how voters weigh each player’s case. How either performs in that matchup, and how far either team goes in the postseason, will almost certainly influence the outcome of the award.