Written By | Health News Agencies
The 2026 ESPYS handed out its hardware in New York, with the Knicks' championship run dominating the evening and host Marcello Hernández refusing to let anyone off easy.
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NEW YORK CITY
Award shows live and die by their host, and Wednesday night's ESPYS at Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater found a genuinely funny one in Marcello Hernández. The Saturday Night Live star spent much of the evening needling the very athletes he was there to celebrate, and nobody took more good-natured heat than New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson, who nonetheless walked away with the night's biggest haul.
Brunson took home Best Male Athlete, Best NBA Player, and Best Championship Performance after leading the Knicks to their first NBA title in over five decades, capped by a 45-point outing in the clinching Game 5 win over the San Antonio Spurs. It was, by any measure, one of the standout individual seasons of the year in American sports — and Hernández made sure the room knew there was an asterisk floating in the air.
The Joke Heard Across the Garden
Before presenting one of Brunson's awards, Hernández leaned into a bit about nepotism in sports, referencing the fact that Brunson won his championship playing for a franchise where, depending on how you frame the storyline, familiarity and pedigree in basketball circles run deep. Broadcast cameras cut to Brunson's reaction: a wide grin and an easy laugh, the kind of response that suggested he'd either heard the joke before or simply didn't care, buoyed by the fact that he'd just spent the season making it look easy on the court.
Brunson didn't let the ribbing derail his moment. In his acceptance speech, he turned serious, thanking the people who got him there. "First and foremost, I want to say thank you to my family for sacrificing everything day in and day out," he said, before crediting his Knicks teammates and the organization as a whole. "Without them, none of this would be possible. They allow me to be me. I'm forever indebted to them."
A'ja Wilson and a Night of Overdue Recognition
On the women's side, Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson claimed Best Athlete in Women's Sports, continuing a run of dominance that has made her arguably the most decorated player in the WNBA over the past several seasons. Her win added to a night that also recognized breakout talent well outside the traditional big-league spotlight: figure skater Alysa Liu took home the Best Breakthrough Athlete award for her gold-medal performances in women's singles and the team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, a reminder that the ESPYS' voting body still has room for stories beyond the NBA and NFL news cycle.
Elsewhere in the major categories, Shohei Ohtani was recognized as Best MLB Player, continuing his stranglehold on that honor in recent years, while Connor McDavid took Best NHL Player. Declan Farmer was honored as Best Athlete with a Disability for his performance in Para hockey, rounding out a slate that, at least on paper, tried to represent the full breadth of American sports fandom.
The Humanitarian Moments That Actually Landed
Awards shows tend to save their most emotionally weighted material for the end of the broadcast, and Wednesday's ESPYS followed the formula. Former NBA player Jason Collins, who came out as the first openly gay active player in a major American men's team sport back in 2013, was posthumously honored with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage. Former MLB pitcher Jim Abbott, born without a right hand and long celebrated as one of baseball's great inspirational figures, received the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance. And Scott Ruskan was honored with the Pat Tillman Award, an ESPYS tradition reserved for individuals whose service and leadership extend well beyond the field of play.
These were the moments that tend to cut through the red-carpet noise and the joke-heavy monologue — a reminder that underneath the glitz, the ESPYS have always tried to carve out space for stories about resilience that have nothing to do with box scores.
What This Means for Sports Fans
The ESPYS occupy an odd space in the sports calendar: part awards show, part victory lap, part comedy roast, airing during the mid-summer lull when football hasn't started, baseball is in its dog days, and basketball fans are still riding the high (or nursing the hangover) of the just-concluded NBA Finals. For Knicks fans specifically, Wednesday night was one more chance to savor a championship that ended one of the longest title droughts in American professional sports. For everyone else, it was a two-hour cross-section of who mattered in sports over the past twelve months, filtered through fan voting and delivered with just enough humor to keep it from feeling like homework.
The Bottom Line
Jalen Brunson absorbed the night's best joke and still walked away with its biggest trophies, A'ja Wilson and Alysa Liu reminded viewers that dominance takes many forms, and the ceremony's closing humanitarian awards did what they always do — slow the room down and remind everyone why these nights matter beyond the highlight reels. As sports moves into its late-summer stretch, the 2026 ESPYS offered a tidy, occasionally biting recap of a year that, for Knicks fans especially, is going to be remembered for a very long time.
