Sports Illustrated's 2022 Sportsperson of the Year Awards Recap
Last night, many of the Golden State Warriors players, coaches, and top brass, as well as a myriad of other athletes who had accomplished some amazing human feats over the course of the last year, attended Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year Awards at The Regency Ballroom in San Francisco.
The award was given to Stephen Curry in the wake of the Warriors’ championship last season, a season where Curry won the Most Valuable Player award for the NBA Finals, and where he not just eclipsed Ray Allen’s long standing three-point record, but surpassed 3,000 triples total for his career - a nearly unfathomable feat for a player who looks like he’s still in his prime.
While this event caps off an incredible year for Steph, he started the show in one of the most Steph ways possible by unselfishly turning attention to somebody else. Yesterday was also the homecoming of WNBA star and Olympian Britney Griner, who was recently freed from Russian incarceration after months in a foreign prison. Curry’s opening speech was, to many, the highlight of the event:
And he wasn’t the only Warrior to show BG his support. Draymond Green, also in attendance, spoke to the media about Griner’s return when prompted:
Curry wasn’t the only award recipient, as there were a number of other winners for a few other SI awards in attendance: Olympian and entrepreneur Allyson Felix received the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, 11-year-old golfer Carter Bonas received the SportsKid of the Year award, pro softball player Jocelyn Alo was named as the Female Athlete of the Year, and human rights activist Dieter Cantu received the Reebok Human Rights Award for his work on juvenile justice system reform. Aaron Judge, a pro baseball player recently in the running to be signed by his hometown San Francisco Giants before ultimately choosing to return to the New York Yankees, was not at the show, but was the recipient for the Male Athlete of the Year award.
Sportsperson of the Year is just one of the few awards which Curry took home in calendar 2022, however. He also received the BET Sportsman of the Year, was voted the Best NBA Player at the ESPY’s, and brought home more on-court hardware in the form of All-Star Game and Western Conference Finals MVPs to add to the Finals trophy and ring. Curry also graduated from Davidson, where he played college ball, by completing online courses during the latter half of the regular season and much of the postseason. His jersey was retired and he was inducted into the university’s Hall of Fame alongside a graduation ceremony which the university hosted for him.
Nobody’s had a year quite like Stephen Curry. And while many on the Warriors are currently struggling to meet their average production, his MVP-level play has kept them afloat as they fight to ingress to their mean, looking at potentially another trip back to the mountaintop once things start to click. At age 34, Curry looks like he could still be getting better, and as long as he’s on the roster, the Warriors will have a shot to be competitive.
Congratulations to Stephen Curry on Sportsperson of the Year, and for an amazing 2022!
(Photo credit: Michael Calpito / WarriorsTalk