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New York (AFP)
NBA champion LeBron James, Super Bowl winner Patrick Mahomes and Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka were among the five athletes honored Sunday by Sports Illustrated magazine for their off-field activism.
Sports Illustrated’s annual “Athlete of the Year” was The Activist Athlete and paid tribute to the off-field activities of LeBron, Osaka, quarterback Mahomes and his NFL teammate Laurent Duvernay-Tardif and the champion of the WNBA women’s Breanna Stewart.
The magazine cited “five men and women who in 2020 were champions in every sense of the word: champions on the field, champions for others.”
LeBron led the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA title, capturing the fourth of his career, and became the first three-time winner of the Sports Illustrated Athlete Award after 2012 and 2016, equaling the two athlete awards given to the golfer. Tiger Woods in 1996 and 2000.
“With his efforts for racial justice, educational reform and empowerment of the black community, as well as his campaign for the right to vote and his varied charitable work, there is no question that he sets the standard for the modern socially conscious athlete. “the magazine said of LeBron, who also received the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award for his professional dedication to public service.
LeBron spoke out on police brutality, racial inequality, and championed a voter registration program, “More Than One Vote,” that helped register more than 10,000 poll workers and register voters to combat voter suppression.
For her part, Osaka won her third Grand Slam tennis title at this year’s US Open. He participated in the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd was killed by a white police officer and wore black masks during his US Open career, each bearing the name of an African American killed by police.
The Super Bowl MVP, Quarterback Mahomes, led the Kansas City Chiefs to the Super Bowl crown, lobbied the NFL to recognize the Black Lives Matter movement and endorsed the right of NFL players to protest. social.
Meanwhile, Duvernay-Tardif, the Chiefs ‘right-hand offensive guard, but also a doctor, renounced his NFL uniform for the doctors’ personal protective equipment when the covid-19 pandemic occurred, joining the first line of a battle for people’s lives.
Stewart supported Black Lives Matter from the beginning of the women’s WNBA bubble to the very end, when she helped the Seattle Storm claim a fourth title and win WNBA Finals MVP honors after recovering from injury at the Achilles tendon.
© 2020 AFP
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