{"id":69201,"date":"2025-07-17T06:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T06:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/69201\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T06:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T06:31:09","slug":"dallas-area-well-represented-at-2025-espys-as-scottie-scheffler-cooper-flagg-win-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/69201\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas area well represented at 2025 ESPYS as Scottie Scheffler, Cooper Flagg win awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES \u2014 NBA Finals MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> and Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles<\/a> won as best male and female athletes at the ESPYS on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Gilgeous-Alexander led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the NBA championship last month while piling up hardware as league MVP and scoring champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true and for dreams to come true it takes a village,\u201d he said, thanking his wife, parents, brother and others. \u201cThose names probably don\u2019t mean much but to me they mean everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biles, an 11-time Olympic medalist, claimed the night\u2019s first award, best championship performance for her efforts at the Paris Games. She won three golds and a silver while helping the U.S. win its first team title since 2016.<\/p>\n

Sports Roundup<\/p>\n

Get the latest D-FW sports news, analysis and opinion delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, Kevin Sherrington’s A La Carte.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was very unexpected, especially in a category of all men,\u201d Biles said after kissing her husband, Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens.<\/p>\n

She beat out Stephen Curry, Freddie Freeman and Rory McIlroy.<\/p>\n

Biles\u2019 Olympic teammate, Suni Lee, won the best comeback award for overcoming two rare kidney diseases. She brought one of her doctors to the show.<\/p>\n

Dallas area well-represented<\/p>\n

Biles wasn\u2019t the only athlete with Texas ties to claim an award Wednesday night. The Dallas area also had two victors in golfer Scottie Scheffler and Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg.<\/p>\n

Scheffler claimed the award for Best Golfer, while Flagg was named Best College Athlete in men\u2019s sports.<\/a><\/p>\n

Related:Dallas Mavericks\u2019 Cooper Flagg wins ESPY for 2025 Best Male College Athlete<\/a>Arthur Ashe Award for Courage<\/p>\n

Basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson accepted the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage from point guard Russell Westbrook.<\/p>\n

Robertson was president of the NBA Players\u2019 Association at the time of a landmark antitrust lawsuit against the NBA in 1970. It led to an extensive reform of the league\u2019s strict free agency and draft rules and eventually to higher salaries for all players.<\/p>\n

The 86-year-old Robertson, a 12-time All Star known as The Big O during his career, was the first Black president of any sports labor union.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew there was work to do. There was a desperate need for players to have more career security, improved working conditions and other accommodations,\u201d he said. \u201cIn life, it\u2019s important to be persistent or as I have been called stubborn. Stubborn about what you believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Icon Award<\/p>\n

Taurasi and retired U.S. national women\u2019s soccer team star Alex Morgan shared the Icon Award in recognition of their careers and major impact on sports.<\/p>\n

The women touched their trophies together in a toast.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur mission has always been very similar,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cWe fought to leave our game in a better place than where we found it just as a generation before us did. We\u2019re standing on the shoulders of giants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taurasi, who retired in February<\/a> after a 20-year basketball career, mentioned her parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Argentina. She also had words for the next generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeep going, don\u2019t wait for someone to hand you anything, outwork them, be loyal, bring that damn fire every day,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re proof you can do it. We did it our way. No shortcuts, no apologies, and no regrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pat Tillman Award for Service<\/p>\n

Former athletes David Walters and Erin Regan accepted the Pat Tillman Award for Service, given to those who have served in a way that honors the legacy of the former NFL player and U.S. Army Ranger.<\/p>\n

Walters, 37, earned a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was a seven-time world championships medalist. He\u2019s now a Los Angeles city firefighter.<\/p>\n

Regan, 45, was a Wake Forest soccer player who spent one season in the pros before retiring to join the Los Angeles County Fire Department.<\/p>\n

Both Walters and Regan fought the deadly and destructive wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January.<\/p>\n

Jimmy V Award<\/p>\n

An emotional Katie Schumacher-Cawley<\/a> accepted the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance with her husband and children joining in the standing ovation. The Penn State women\u2019s volleyball coach was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in September. She continued coaching without missing a practice and became the first woman to guide a team to the NCAA national championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cCancer changed my life but it didn\u2019t take it. It didn\u2019t take my belief, it didn\u2019t take my spirit and it didn\u2019t take my team,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Gatorade Male and Female Players of the Year<\/p>\n

Basketball player Cameron Boozer and track and field athlete Jane Hedengren were named the Gatorade Best Male and Female Players of the Year.<\/p>\n

Boozer will be playing at Duke in the fall, following in the collegiate footsteps of his father, Carlos, a former NBA All-Star.<\/p>\n

Hedengren will compete for BYU in her hometown of Provo, Utah.<\/p>\n

For more sports coverage from <\/b>The Dallas Morning News<\/b>, click here<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n

To view subscription options for <\/b>The News<\/b> and SportsDay, click here<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 NBA Finals MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles won as best male…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,2494,1596,3139,1430,3777,1505,62,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-69201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-cooper-flagg","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-mavericks","12":"tag-golf","13":"tag-olympics","14":"tag-scottie-scheffler","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-tx","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114867174373170256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}