Shohei Ohtani<\/a> won the AP Male Athlete of the Year on Tuesday for the fourth time.<\/p>\nHammon has been impressed with everything about Wilson in her four years coaching in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer relatability, her being down to earth makes her a great superstar,\u201d Hammon said. \u201cHer skill set is unmatched, but she\u2019s also the easiest player to coach. To have that mixture of humility, grace and skill, there\u2019s a reason why she\u2019s doing things that have never been done.\u201d<\/p>\n
This season was different for Wilson and the Aces, who had cruised to their previous two titles as a heavy favorite. This year, with a month to go, the Aces were sitting at .500 and were in danger of missing the playoffs after coming off a record 53-point loss against Minnesota. <\/p>\n
Wilson rallied her team to wins in the final 16 regular-season games to secure the No. 2 seed, and Las Vegas went on to win the championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis season I found myself through the adversity and mud we went through,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Despite her numbers being on par with her unanimous MVP season the year before, Wilson heard the chatter that she wasn\u2019t playing as well and that she wasn\u2019t the front-runner to repeat as the league\u2019s top player. <\/p>\n
The 29-year-old used that as fuel on the court. She led the league with 23.4 points and 2.3 blocks per game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way they talk about us, the way they talk about me, I\u2019m ready for that, I\u2019m ready for the noise,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cIt\u2019s always going to be something. If we sit here and try to please everybody, we\u2019re going to go insane. I\u2019m just going to continue to prove why I\u2019m one of the greatest and why my team is part of a dynamic dynasty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson raised her game even further in the playoffs, helping the Aces survive decisive winner-take-all games in the quarterfinals and semifinals. She then helped Las Vegas sweep Phoenix in the WNBA Finals, hitting the winning shot in Game 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fair to say the expectations for her are so sky high now, she\u2019ll be compared to a degree to the unanimous MVP she was the year before,\u201d ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo said. \u201cEven though she wasn\u2019t unanimous MVP this year, the journey she had this season was different and she was playing the best basketball of her career in the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year, you wonder how she\u2019ll get better, and she always does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson became the first player in either the WNBA or NBA to win the MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Finals MVP and lead the league in scoring in the same season.<\/p>\n
Wilson broke a tie with Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson, who all won the WNBA MVP three times. She plans to have another relaxing offseason as she won\u2019t play overseas or in Unrivaled, the domestic 3-on-3 league. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s already crossed one thing off her bucket list, meeting her idol Beyonce at the Formula 1 race in Las Vegas last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was super cool, Beyonce is someone that I\u2019ve always wanted to meet because I just admired her work,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
The Aces great is that way herself for so many. She launched a shoe and clothing line with Nike. Her shoe sold out minutes after it went on sale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing, something that I think about every day when I look around and see people just wearing my shoe. Every day it\u2019s a gentle reminder that you know it\u2019s a special moment that we\u2019re living in and I\u2019m so grateful when I look back on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/a><\/p>\nDoug Feinberg, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of 47 sports journalists from the AP and its members voted. Wilson received 17 votes, tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-336804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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