Gilgeous-Alexander, Biles win top honors at ESPY Awards

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.

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.

She beat out Stephen Curry, Freddie Freeman and Rory McIlroy.

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 NBA 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.

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 at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was a seven-time world championships medalist. He’s 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.

Basketball player Cameron Boozer and track and field athlete Jane Hedengren were named the Gatorade Best Male and Female 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.



(AP Photo Mark J. Terrill)