{"id":895881,"date":"2026-09-14T21:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T21:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/895881\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T21:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T21:44:14","slug":"gabby-williams-named-world-cups-best-defender-and-among-fibas-all-star-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/895881\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabby Williams Named World Cup\u2019s Best Defender and Among FIBA\u2019s All-Star Five"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Valkyries forwards Gabby Williams and Janelle Sala\u00fcn led France to a silver medal at the 2026 FIBA World Cup, the countries\u2019 best-ever World Cup finish. Williams was named the tournament&#8217;s best defensive player and was recognized as one of its five best players overall by FIBA&#8217;s All-Star Five. Williams led the World Cup in total points (112) and finished third in points per game (18.7 PPG). Sala\u00fcn earned World Cup All-Second Team honors, averaging 11.2 points and 5.8 rebounds while shooting 46.4% from three. France was defeated by Team USA in the championship game, as Valkyries head coach Natalie Nakase and athletic trainer Katelin Knox helped the United States to its fifth consecutive gold medal. Read below to see how each player performed in the knockout phase.<\/p>\n<p>Team: France<br \/>Valkyries Teammate: Janelle Sala\u00fcn<\/p>\n<p>Team: France<br \/>Valkyries Teammate: Gabby Williams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valkyries forwards Gabby Williams and Janelle Sala\u00fcn led France to a silver medal at the 2026 FIBA World&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-895881","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\/895881","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=895881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}