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 the Connecticut Sun.
"It's bittersweet because we lost our back-to-back championship. We didn't win it [her] last year in the NCAA tournament, so I can't be that, I can't give her what that feels like," Staley said. "But I'm glad I got Sheryl's number in my phone to pass it on to A'ja so A'ja can get the very thing that she wants."
The Aces opened the WNBA Finals with a 99-82 victory in Game 1 on Sunday, when Wilson tallied 19 points and a team-high eight rebounds.
History will be on Wilson's side with a win tonight in Game 2 (9 p.m. ET, ESPN). Teams that trail 2-0 in a best-of-5 WNBA Finals have never come back to win it all.
