{"id":488492,"date":"2026-02-20T21:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/488492\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T21:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:32:09","slug":"black-history-month-player-spotlight-candace-parker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/488492\/","title":{"rendered":"Black History Month Player Spotlight: Candace Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From No. 1 pick to champion across franchises, Candace Parker built a career worthy of forever.<\/p>\n<p>In 2008,\u00a0Parker\u00a0was drafted No. 1 overall by the Los Angeles Sparks and made history, becoming the first player to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-225472\" class=\"wp-image-225472\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-83115632-2-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"747\"  \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-225472\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Candace Parker #3 of the Los Angeles Sparks poses for a portrait with the Most Valuable Player Award present by T-Mobile and the Hanns-G \u2018Go Beyond\u2019 Rookie of the Year award prior to Game Two of the WNBA Finals on October 3, 2008<\/p>\n<p>She continued her dominance with a second MVP in 2013, then led the Sparks to a WNBA Championship in 2016, earning Finals MVP. In 2020, she capped her Los Angeles tenure as Defensive Player of the Year. Parker joined the Chicago Sky in 2021, where she earned her seventh All\u2011WNBA First Team selection and led the franchise to its first WNBA Championship in 2021. In 2022, she helped Chicago follow up that title run by finishing with the league\u2019s best regular\u2011season record.<\/p>\n<p>In 2023, she added a third WNBA title with the Las Vegas Aces. After announcing her retirement in 2024, Parker became the second player in WNBA history to have her jersey retired by two franchises, Los Angeles and Chicago, in 2025.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-225386\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4x5-5-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1440\" height=\"1880\"  \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From No. 1 pick to champion across franchises, Candace Parker built a career worthy of forever. In 2008,\u00a0Parker\u00a0was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-488492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488492","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=488492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}