SI:AM | The 2022 Sportsperson of the Year Is …

Plus, the dominos begin to fall at the winter meetings.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m getting increasingly nervous about Aaron Judge’s chances of coming back to New York.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏆 Honoring Steph

⚾ The first big hot stove move

📰 Another Adam Schefter controversy

If you're reading this on SI.com, you can sign up to get this free newsletter in your inbox each weekday at SI.com/newsletters.

And the winner is…

Kohjiro Kinno/Sports Illustrated

How do you pick one athlete to single out as the Sportsperson of the Year? In a year that saw Aaron Judge hit 62 home runs, Brian Robinson come back from being shot in an attempted robbery and Sue Bird put a bow on her legendary career, it’s daunting to give the honor to just one person. But Sports Illustrated has named Stephen Curry as its 2022 Sportsperson of the Year—and it’s tough to argue with the decision.

Fourteen years into his NBA career, Curry continues to amaze. After two difficult transitional years following the departure of Kevin Durant, the Warriors, led by Curry, returned to the Finals last summer and won their fourth title in eight years. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Michael Rosenberg writes:

This is What Steph Curry did this year: He won his fourth championship. He won that Finals MVP award after scoring an efficient 31.2 points per game against the best defensive team in the league. He graduated from Davidson, 13 years after he left for the NBA following his junior season. He expanded his charitable reach: Since 2019, the Eat.Learn.Play. Foundation he and Ayesha founded has served more than 25 million meals to food-insecure children, spent $2.5 million on literacy-focused grants and distributed 500,000 books, according to Curry’s representatives. He has also provided seed funding for men’s and women’s golf teams at Howard University, a historically Black school, and started the Underrated Golf Tour, a junior circuit designed to make the game more inclusive. He is co-chair of Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote initiative. And now we name him

Sports Illustrated

’s Sportsperson of the Year. Curry, who also shared the award with the 2017–18 Warriors, joins LeBron James, Tom Brady and Tiger Woods as the only multiple-time winners. We salute him this year not just for what he did, but for how he did it.

On a daily basis, Curry pulls off one of the toughest tricks in sports: He passionately seeks greatness without being consumed by it. He reminds us that stardom is not a license to be a jerk, and being a jerk is not a prerequisite for stardom. Longtime NBA fans can recite many stories about Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant belittling teammates to motivate them. There are no such stories about Curry. He can go weeks without giving anybody a pep talk, and, when he does, it’s usually pretty short:

Come on! Lock in!

Curry is the greatest shooter in NBA history, a surefire future Hall of Famer and a four-time champion. But what makes him most remarkable, Rosenberg writes, might be that he hasn’t let all that success get to his head. He’s easygoing, generous and kind in a way that few superstar athletes are. He’s the kind of guy worthy of being given SI’s highest honor.

You can get the 2022 Sportsperson of the Year issue here.

deGrom, Turner, Verlander make moves

Finally, there has been some movement in the MLB offseason. Transactions were slow to trickle in during the first few weeks of free agency, but with the winter meetings taking place right now in San Diego, we have seen some deals being made.

The first domino to fall was Jacob deGrom’s signing with the Rangers on Friday night. Mets fans didn’t spend long mourning, though, as the team went out yesterday and reached an agreement with Justin Verlander (two years, $86.8 million, with a vesting option for a third year). Tom Verducci writes that the Mets had no choice but to sign Verlander after deGrom left town. And Stephanie Apstein writes that Verlander may even be an upgrade over the two-time NL Cy Young winner.

The other big move yesterday was the Phillies’ signing Trea Turner for 11 years and $300 million. It’s easy to forget after they reached the World Series this year that the Phillies (87 wins) were a distant third in the NL East behind the Braves and Mets (101 wins each). Turner is a major upgrade over Jean Segura (and signing him allows the Phillies to move Bryson Stott from shortstop over to second base, Segura’s former position) in addition to being the type of true leadoff hitter that Philadelphia lacked last season, Emma Baccellieri writes.

And that’s just Day 1 of the winter meetings. We’re still waiting for the biggest target of all, Aaron Judge, to make his decision. He’ll be in San Diego today—a move that caught the Yankees by surprise. That may not bode well for him re-signing with New York.

The best of Sports Illustrated

• After their win over the Chiefs, Albert Breer thinks the Bengals deserve to be considered a real contender in the AFC.
• With the USMNT eliminated from the World Cup, Brian Straus wonders whether Gregg Berhalter should be allowed to coach the team for a second cycle.
• Pat Forde looks at the domino effect of Cincinnati’s hiring Scott Satterfield away from Louisville.
• Jimmy Traina rightfully skewered Adam Schefter for doing PR for Deshaun Watson. 

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Connor McDavid’s individual effort on a short-handed goal.

4. UCLA’s double-overtime comeback win over North Carolina in the women’s College Cup.

3. Paik Seung-ho’s laser-beam goal in South Korea’s loss to Brazil.

2. Kawhi Leonard’s step-back game-winner against the Hornets.

1. Giannis Antetokounmpo’s birthday plans.

SIQ

Stephen Curry holds the NBA record with 3,232 career made threes. But which active NBA player has the best career three-point percentage?

• Stephen Curry
• Seth Curry
• Desmond Bane
• Joe Harris

Yesterday’s SIQ: Which of the following iconic NHL trophies was not stolen from the Hockey Hall of Fame 52 years ago this week?

• Vezina Trophy
• Stanley Cup
• Bill Masterton Trophy
• Conn Smythe Trophy

Answer: Vezina Trophy. Although the version of the Stanley Cup that the thieves stole was a replica, the Bill Masterton and Conn Smythe trophies were real.

The Dec. 4, 1970, robbery came a year and a half after another robbery at the Hall of Fame on April 9, 1969, in which the Conn Smythe, Calder and Hart trophies were stolen from a smashed display case. They were later recovered.

The Stanley Cup had not been on display during the earlier robbery but thieves were able to abscond with it during the December heist, making off with the iconic championship trophy as well as the two high-profile individual awards. While the Cup was still missing, NHL president Clarence Campbell said that the stolen trophy was actually just a reproduction. A week later, all three missing pieces of hockey history were left in the driveway of a Toronto cop.

One important piece of memorabilia was still at large, though. In January 1970, someone had stolen a piece of the Stanley Cup’s collar. The three rings that sat below the original cup had apparently been pilfered by a museum visitor in broad daylight. The Hall didn’t even realize the 20-pound piece of silver was missing for several days. The collar remained missing for seven years until it turned up at a Toronto cleaning store in September ’77 wrapped in brown paper.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

Sports Illustrated may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.