NBA Finals MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles won as best male and female athletes at The ESPYS on Wednesday night.
Gilgeous-Alexander led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the NBA championship last month while piling up hardware as league MVP and scoring champion.
“It’s a dream come true, and for dreams to come true, it takes a village,” he said, thanking his wife, parents, brother and others. “Those names probably don’t mean much, but to me, they mean everything.”
Biles, an 11-time Olympic medalist, also claimed the night’s first award, Best Championship Performance, for her efforts at the Paris Games. She won three golds and a silver while helping the U.S. win its first team title since 2016.
“That was very unexpected, especially in a category of all men,” Biles said after kissing her husband, Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens.
She beat out Stephen Curry, Freddie Freeman and Rory McIlroy for the award.
The Philadelphia Eagles, who won the franchise’s second Super Bowl in February, claimed best team honors, beating out nine other nominees, including the Thunder, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Florida Panthers, the Ohio State football team and the U.S. national women’s soccer team.
Biles’ Olympic teammate Suni Lee won the best comeback award for overcoming two rare kidney diseases. She brought one of her doctors to the show.
Basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson accepted the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage from point guard Russell Westbrook.
Robertson was president of the National Basketball Players Association at the time of a landmark antitrust lawsuit against the NBA in 1970. It led to an extensive reform of the league’s strict free agency and draft rules and eventually to higher salaries for all players.
The 86-year-old Robertson, a 12-time All-Star 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, improved working conditions and other accommodations,” he said. “In life, it’s important to be persistent or, as I have been called, stubborn. Stubborn about what you believe in.”
Retired WNBA star Diana Taurasi and retired USWNT star Alex Morgan shared the Icon Award in recognition of their careers and major impact on sports.
The women touched their trophies together in a toast.
“Our mission has always been very similar,” Morgan said. “We fought to leave our game in a better place than where we found it just as a generation before us did. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Taurasi, who retired in February after a 20-year basketball career, mentioned her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from Argentina. She also had words for the next generation.
“Keep going. Don’t wait for someone to hand you anything, outwork them, be loyal, bring that damn fire every day,” she said. “We’re proof you can do it. We did it our way. No shortcuts, no apologies and no regrets.”
Former athletes David Walters and Erin Regan accepted the Pat Tillman Award for Service, given to those who have served in a way that honors the legacy of the former NFL player and U.S. Army Ranger.
Walters, 37, earned a gold medal in swimming at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was a seven-time world championship medalist. He is now a Los Angeles city firefighter.
Regan, 45, was a Wake Forest soccer player who spent one season in the pros before retiring to join the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Both Walters and Regan fought the deadly and destructive wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January.
An emotional Katie Schumacher-Cawley accepted the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance with her husband and children joining in the standing ovation. The Penn State women’s volleyball coach was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in September. She continued coaching without missing a practice and became the first woman to guide a team to the NCAA national championship.
“Cancer changed my life, but it didn’t take it. It didn’t take my belief, it didn’t take my spirit, and it didn’t take my team,” she said.
Basketball player Cameron Boozer and track and field athlete Jane Hedengren were named the Gatorade players of the year.
Boozer will be playing at Duke in the fall, following in the collegiate footsteps of his father, Carlos, a former NBA All-Star.
Hedengren will compete for BYU in her hometown of Provo, Utah.
Gillis’ awkward monologue
Comedian Shane Gillis’ opening monologue as host of the show that honors the past year’s top athletes and sports moments went over awkwardly.
Early on, he called out various famous faces in the Dolby Theatre crowd, including Taurasi. Gillis said, “Give it up for her,” after calling her “Deanna.” The camera showed an unsmiling Taurasi shaking her head. Gillis quickly caught his mistake, saying, “My bad on that.”
Gillis moved on to WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark, who wasn’t on hand.
“When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she’s going to work at a Waffle House so she can continue doing what she loves most: fist-fighting Black women,” he joked.
While some in the audience laughed, others appeared uncomfortable.
Gillis plowed on for 10 minutes, with jokes about President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, whose sex trafficking investigation has roiled the Justice Department and FBI.
Gillis’ performance drew mixed reviews on social media, with some calling him “hilarious” and others “cringey.”
Gillis’ initial joke about North Carolina coach Bill Belichick, 73, and his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson drew a lot of laughs.
“A bookie is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend before bedtime,” he said.
But the laughter lessened as Gillis continued.
Before closing it out, a smiling Gillis said, “I see a lot of you don’t like me, and that’s OK. That’s it for me. That went about exactly how we all thought it was going to go. I don’t know why this happened.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
