SI honors athletes for off-field activism

NBA champion LeBron James, Super Bowl winner Patrick Mahomes and Japan’s Naomi Osaka were among five athletes honored Sunday by Sports Illustrated magazine for their off-field activism.

SI’s annual Sportsperson of the Year was The Activist Athlete and paid tribute to off-field activities by James, Osaka, Mahomes and his NFL teammate Laurent Duvernay-Tardif and Women’s NBA champion Breanna Stewart.

The magazine cited “five men and women who in 2020 were champions in every sense of the word: champions on the field, champions for others off it.”