Matthew Dellavedova Won The NBL Finals MVP Despite His Team Losing The Series But Decided To Give The Trophy To His Opponent Will Hickey Who Almost Put Up A Triple Double In The Clinching Game

Wow. Matthew Dellavedova was named NBL Finals MVP despite his Melbourne United Club losing the title to the Illawarra Hawks. However, Dellavedova said Hawks guard Hawks guard Will “Davo” Hickey was more deserving of the award. Delly then walked off stage with his MVP trophy and handed it to Hickey, who had 21/10/8 in the fifth and deciding game. Sports.

I didn't think Matthew Dellavedova could look better in a losing performance than when he sat at the post-game press conference on life support after almost dying while guarding Steph Curry in the 2015 NBA Finals. Wait, there's no way that series was actually 10 years ago.

(Double checks on Google, Basketball Reference, and NBA.com).

Well fuuuuuuuck me. I know time has ceased to exist since 2020, but I refuse to believe that the Cavs/Warriors blood feud was born a decade ago.

Nonetheless, A+ work from Delly who deserves all the Who's Back Of The Week, Nothing But Class, and any other awards Pardon My Take wants to shower on him for being a hell of a lad, mate, or whatever Aussies call someone that displays that type of sportsmanship after losing a hard fought series following a long season. You could make the case that the NBL did Delly no favors by voting him the Finals MVP in a losing effort. But I will give them a pass since us Americans only seem to bitch about every little thing the NBA does wrong when it comes to basketball.

Now Delly gets to walk around with his head high as the true winner of this year's NBL Finals. Sure you can make a case that the team that actually won the championship deserves to be called that. But nobody, including you the reader, even remembers that team's name despite it being in the tweet at the top of the blog (It's the Illawarra Hawks, which I admittedly forgot myself). Even Will Hickey (not sure if I can call him Davo as an NBL casual) was powerless to Delly since he had his kid in one hand, which makes this move even classier and damn near physically impossible to turn down in the moment. Davo Will may have won the battle, but Delly won the war (if the war is making people outside of Oceania give an shit about the NBL).