About an hour and a half before Thursday's game tipped off, Maya Moore was officially presented with the WNBA's MVP trophy during a press conference with league president Laurel Richie.
It was a nice, well-attended and sometimes funny presentation in which Moore, who did just about everything a player could do to get her team to the place it is, reacted with both humor and humility.
In her presentation Richie joked that, in addition to leading the league in scoring, she also probably led in black eyes. She said she felt like she knew Moore, as they both came to the league at the same time. "My sense is you came back this year on a mission," Richie said, "to make an impact on your team.''
Moore?
Echoing her previous comments, she talked about how strange it is to be focusing on a personal accomplishment less than two hours before the Lynx playoffs began. She thanked her team and her teammates for the environment she came into as a rookie, one that allowed her to grow as a person and a player.
She looked at her mom and asked her if she imagined this day decades ago when Moore was a little girl running around the family's home in Missouri. "I couldn't have dreamed it up," Moore said.
Then she turned to the trophy to see if it was smiling. It should be, she said, because of, ''how much fun it is to be on this Minnesota Lynx team," she said. "We enjoy coming to practice, the tough times that have come our way, especially this season, and how we've overcome them.''
"This award, the thing I'm probably most proud of is the consistency it represents," Moore said. "Coming in every day and walking the walk. That's what you want to do as a leader. You want to go out and do it. .. I felt I kept my word when I said I'm going to be there for my team when they need me. And so did the other 11 players in the locker room. To know my teammates are proud of me means more than winning the award. I care more about what they think, and what the coaching staff thinks. To know they appreciate and respect me means a lot.''
