The most valuable player award for the WNBA is given after their summer season concludes each year. For the 2008 season, Candace Parker was named the most valuable player basketball fans were lucky enough to get to see. It was also the last time fans will see her on the court as she recently unveiled on the cover of ESPN that she was pregnant and will miss the season–the the surprise of fans and of her team.
WNBA MVP Parker has been a terrific athlete from her time in the college level, where she was an All American players, Parker enrolled in 2006 at the University of Tennessee joining the famed Lady Vols basketball program. In her first season there she established a new record for scoring points, took home the Rookie of the Year and nailed the game-winning shot at the SEC Conference Finals. In the two seasons that followed, she brought the Vols victories in the NCAA Finals. Parker was named the Most Valuable Player for the Finals both years. She joins Cheryl Miller on the short list of female athletes to accomplish this lofty goal. Parker, never tired, also managed to be one of the Academic All American basketball players for her time at UTENN.
Unlike other WNBA MVPs, Parker’s debut season with the Los Angeles Sparks found her on a scoring and record-breaking mission. In just her first rookie game, she scored a huge 34 points–that easily eclipsed the previous league record. Later in 2008, she dunked during a WNBA game, becoming the second player in WNBA history to ever do so. Her teammate Lisa Leslie was the first to have done this. Her statistics were also impressive: 18.5 points per game average and nearly 10 rebounds per game, while dishing out almost 4 assists.
She capped off her storybook season by winning both the Rookie of the Year award and the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. In the history of WNBA MVPs this has never happened. In fact, this has only been accomplished by two other players in basketball history: Wilt Chamberlain and Wes Unseld. After these remarkable accomplishments it wasn’t a surprise that Parker became one of the most recognized female athletes in the nation.
Besides becoming the WNBA MVP, Parker also landed rich endorsement contracts with the three biggest names for athletes: McDonalds, Gatorade, and Adidas. These contracts brought her a lucrative payday and they also impressed the head honchos in the sports industry, who traditionally have shied away from female athletes as celebrities. When Parker posed for the magazine cover at ESPN Sports, no one knew that she was pregnant. After they took the cover shots, wrote a story and prepared it – months in advance for publication in March – they discovered that she was pregnant. The cover shot was for March’s female athlete month focus. Once WNBA MVP Candace Parker was on the cover showing her in a white dress cradling her expectant stomach, the secret was out. Though it is an exciting time for Parker, WNBA fans will have to wait another season to see this exciting talent back on the court.
In a very short period of time Candace Parker established herself as an outstanding athlete. With her name always on the scoreboards she has sure became the face of the WNBA