Before A’ja Wilson was a star for the Las Vegas Aces, she reached the highest peaks in women’s college basketball as the 2017 NCAA national champion for coach Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks.
The two have maintained a close relationship, with Wilson referring to Staley as her “second mother.”
Wilson reached out to Staley for advice before Las Vegas’ WNBA Finals series against the New York Liberty.
“She’s probably going to kill me for saying this, but it actually brought me to tears. She texted me probably a week ago, that was before Game 1 of the Finals, and she asked me for Sheryl Swoopes’ number,” Staley told CBS Sports. “She said, ‘I need her number because I want to know how to repeat.'”
Swoopes, a WNBA icon, won four consecutive championships with the Houston Comets from 1997 to 2000. She and Staley were teammates in 2005, as the latter played her final WNBA season with the Comets.
This season is Wilson’s first chance to be a back-to-back champion on the collegiate or professional level. In her final season at South Carolina, the team’s chance at repeating ended with a Sweet 16 loss to the Baylor Bears. Last season, Las Vegas earned the franchise’s first WNBA title with a 3-1 series victory against…
