To the victor go the spoils, unless you’re an MVP in the WNBA.
After NBA 2K24 wrongly put New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu on the cover of the game — over 2020 and 2022 WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson, who also has two Defensive Player of the Year Awards on her resume — it will be interesting to see who will get the cover on the next installment. Breanna Stewart was named as the 2023 WNBA MVP, after also winning it in 2018.
“It’s definitely an honor to be able to say this is my second and to be able to do it in a Liberty jersey for the first time ever,” she said. “I’m excited for what’s going to come tonight, and hopefully the fans are going to go nuts.”
“A tight MVP race is amazing for this league because that means multiple players are being talked about that can do a lot of different things,” she added.
The race was so close that Wilson wound up finishing third behind Connecticut’s Alyssa Thomas, who had a monster season. Thomas was so good that she received more first-place votes than Stewart, as Wilson had more second-place votes than Thomas.
Right now, Stewart and Thomas are facing each other as the Liberty and Sun battle in the semifinals of the WNBA playoffs. Wilson is on the other side of the bracket, as all signs point to Wilson and Stewart meeting in the Finals, as they’ve led the best two teams in the league all season.
Notice how Ionescu’s name wasn’t mentioned in that last paragraph. It’s not a shot at her — because she’s really good — but she’s not the best player on her team or the face of her franchise. She came in second to last place in MVP voting, only receiving a single fifth-place vote. It’s further proof of why her selection to cover the video game was so odd, given that the last three women to get the honor before her were Candace Parker, Sue Bird, and Diana Taurasi — three women who changed the game and are first-ballot Hall of Famers. Stewart and Wilson have those kinds of resumes, not Ionescu.
And for the people who like to point to the fact that Ionescu’s 37-point performance during one round — shooting 25-for-27 — of the WNBA All-Star Game 3-Point Contest is a reason why she got the nod, those same people forget that Craig Hodges also did amazing things in the NBA’s version of that contest in the past, and he never got to be on the cover of anybody’s video game.
Sabrina Ionescu is a wonderful basketball player. But this season, A’ja Wilson, Alyssa Thomas, and Breanna Stewart took their play to different levels as the trio was involved in the closest MVP race in the league’s history. There wasn’t a wrong answer in picking/voting between the three. But, another wrong will be done if one of them isn’t on the next cover of NBA 2K. If somebody is good enough to be the face of the league, then they should be rewarded by being…the face of the league.
Original source here
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