The Golden State Warriors have defeated LeBron James again, this time in the running for Sports Illustrated's 65th annual "Sportsperson of the Year" award.
SI today announced that the Warriors earned the 2018 honor over the only two-time winners of Sportsperson of the Year, LeBron James and Tiger Woods, among others.
The Warriors ended the 2017-18 season the same way they did the previous year, by hoisting the Larry O'Brien trophy following a win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. It hasn't been smooth sailing for Golden State to start the 2018-19 season, but the two-time defending champs are still sitting atop the Western Conference with an 18-9 record.
Per Sports Illustrated: "As with each of the Warriors’ 64 predecessors, performance alone did not exclusively define Golden State. The rise of the Warriors has coincided with the restoration of the NBA as a leading edge of culture that recalls the league’s prolonged boom, which began with the Magic-Larry years in the 1980s and continued through the Jordan-dominated ’90s. The current boom, too, has coincided with the increasing intersection of sports and the hard questions of politics, race and identity, among others, that have so divided the country. The Warriors—forcefully but civilly—embraced the unique platform afforded them. No, they did not change the world and its attendant conflicts and ills, but they did not ignore them either."
Others who were in the running for SI's Sportsperson of the Year include snowboarding gold medalist Chloe Kim, tennis star Naomi Osaka, Tripe Crown-winning horse justify and Washington Capitals' Alex Ovechkin, who helped D.C. snap their title drought with a Stanley Cup victory in June.