LOS Angeles – The NBA Shai Gilgeous -Alexander NBA finals and the Gymnast Olympic champion Simone Biles won the best male and female athletes at ESPY on Wednesday evening.
Gilgeous-Alexander led Oklahoma City Thunder to the NBA championship last month while accumulating equipment as a league MVP and brand champion.
“It is a dream come true and for dreams to come true, you need a village,” he said, thanking his wife, his parents, his brother and his others. “These names probably don’t mean much, but for me, they mean everything.”
Biles, an Olympic medalist of 11 times, also won the first prize for the evening, the best championship performance, for its efforts to the Paris Games. She won three gold medals and money while helping the United States winning her first team title since 2016.
“It was very unexpected, especially in a category of all men,” said Biles after kissing her husband, Chicago Bears in terms of Jonathan Owens security.
She beat Stephen Curry, Freddie Freeman and Rory McILroy for the Prize.
The Eagles of Philadelphia, who won the second super bowl of the franchise in February, demanded the best honors of the team, beating nine other nominees, including the Thunder, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Florida Panthers, the Ohio football team and the American football national team.
The Suni Lee Olympic teammate won the best return price for overcoming two rare kidney diseases. She brought one of her doctors to the show.
The temple of basketball renowned Oscar Robertson accepted the Arthur Ashe Prize for the courage of the leader Russell Westbrook.
Robertson was president of the NBA Players Association at the time of a historic antitrust trial against the NBA in 1970. This led to an in -depth reform of the strict strict agency of the League and project rules and finally to higher wages for all players.
Robertson, 86, a star 12 times known as “The Big O” during his career, was the first black president of any sports labor union.
“I knew there was work to do. There was a desperate need for players to have more career security, improvement of working conditions and other accommodation,” he said. “In life, it is important to be persevering or, as I have been called, stubbornly. Stubborn on what you believe.”
The retirement star of the WNBA Diana Taurasi and the retired star of the USWNT, Alex Morgan, shared the Icon Prize in recognition of their career and their major impact on sports.
The women touched their trophies together in a toast.
“Our mission has always been very similar,” said Morgan. “We fought to leave our game in a better place than the place where we found it as a generation before us. We stand on the shoulders of the giants.”
Taurasi, who retired in February after a 20-year-old basketball career, said his parents, who immigrated to the United States of Argentina. She also had words for the next generation.
“Continue. Don’t wait for someone to give you anything, go beyond it, be faithful, bring this fucking fire every day,” she said. “We are proof that you can do it. We did it in our own way. No shortcuts, no excuses and no regrets.”
Former athletes David Walters and Erin Rejea accepted the Pat Tillman Prize for the Service, awarded to those who served in a way that honors the heritage of the former NFL player and the American army ranger.
Walters, 37, won a gold medal in swimming at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and was seven times a medalist in the world championship. He is now a firefighter from Los Angeles City.
Ress, 45, was a Wake Forest football player who spent a season in the pros before retiring to join the Los Angeles County fire service.
Walters and Rejea fought dead and destructive forest fires in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January.
A Katie Schumacher-Cawley emotional accepted the Jimmy V Prize for perseverance with her husband and children joining the standing ovation. Penn State’s volleyball coach received a stadium breast cancer diagnosis in September. She continued to train without missing practice and became the first woman to guide a team to the National NCAA Championship.
“Cancer has changed my life but it didn’t take it. It didn’t make my conviction, it didn’t take my mind and it didn’t take my team,” she said.
Basketball player Cameron Boozer and athletic athlete Jane Hedengren were named the players of the year of Gatorade.
Boozer will play Duke in the fall, according to the collegial traces of his father, Carlos, a former NBA All-Star.
Hedengren will compete for Byu in his hometown of Provo, Utah.
Shane Gillis’s awkward monologue
The opening monologue of actor Shane Gillis as an animator of the show which honors the best athletes and sports moments of last year has passed awkwardly.
At the beginning, he called various famous faces in the crowd of Dolby Theater, including Taurasi. Gillis said: “Abandon her for her” after calling her “Deanna”. The camera showed a taurasse without smiling shaking its head. Gillis quickly caught his error, saying: “My pain about it.”
Gillis went to the WNBA Caitlin Clark superstar, which was not at hand.
“When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she will work in a waffle house so that she can continue to do what she likes most: black women who fight on the fist,” he joked.
While some in the public laughed, others seemed uncomfortable.
Gillis has plowed for 10 minutes, with jokes on President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, whose investigation into sex trafficking has disrupted the Ministry of Justice and the FBI.
Gillis’ performance has attracted mixed criticism on social networks, some calling it “hilarious” and other “Cringon”.
Gillis’ initial joke on North Carolina coach Bill Belichick, 73, and her 24 -year -old girlfriend Jordon Hudson, made a lot of laughter.
“A bookmaker is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend before bedtime,” he said.
But laughter decreased while Gillis continued.
Before closing it, a smiling gillis said, “I see a lot of you don’t like me and that’s good. That’s it for me. It was exactly how we all thought it was going to happen. I don’t know why it happened.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
