MVP!

After weeks of speculation by Bahamians and basketball fans, women’s professional basketball player Jonquel ‘JJ’ Jones was named as the 2021 KIA Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Most Valuable Player (MVP) on Tuesday. The official announcement was made by the league hours before Jones and the Connecticut Sun tipped off their postseason, taking on the Chicago Sky in the WNBA Semifinals.

The Holmes Rock native made history as she became the first Bahamian athlete to be named MVP of a major professional sports organization.

Jones opted out of the 2020 season due to COVID-19 concerns. She spent most of the season back in Grand Bahama, and used that time to work on her craft along with her mind, body and soul, she said.

“I was just posted up back home in The Bahamas playing video games and working out, pretty much every day, and I basically trained like a 6’ 6” guard. I worked on my ball-handling and my Eurostep in the lane and my body-control under pressure. I was looking at Dirk (retired NBA star Dirk Nowitzki), at KD (NBA star Kevin Durant) – at players with my size who can be versatile and stretch the whole floor… basically just trying to level up my whole offensive game,” Jones wrote for the Players’s Tribune – a media platform out of the United States that produces daily sports conversation and publishes first-person stories from professional athletes.

The 6’ 6” post player for the Sun was one of the league’s top players coming into this season, winning the WNBA’s Most Improved Player (MIP) Award in 2017 and the WNBA Sixth Woman of the Year Award in 2018. She is the first WNBA player to win all three awards, and is the second non-American to be named WNBA MVP behind Lauren Jackson of Australia – a three-time winner.

Jones is also the second player from the Sun to win the award, following in the footsteps of Tina Charles who won in 2012.

It was a landslide victory in the MVP voting this year as Jones received 48 of the 49 first-place votes, finishing one vote shy of winning the award unanimously. She scored 487 points from a national panel of sports writers and broadcasters. Coming away with a second-place finish with 224 points that included one first-place vote was Phoenix Mercury’s center Brittney Griner. Rounding out the top three finishers was the 2018 WNBA MVP, Seattle Storm forward Breanna Stewart.

All three players played together for Russian club UMMC Ekaterinburg in the WNBA offseason in the Russian Women’s Basketball Premier League. They won the league and the EuroLeague Women’s titles this past season.

Jones was not the only Sun player to be rewarded yesterday for a standout season. Her teammate Brionna Jones won the MIP Award and Head Coach Curt Miller won the Coach of the Year Award.

The Sun finished with the best record in the league, sporting a 26-6 win/loss record. They closed out the season with 14 straight regular season wins – the longest winning streak to end the season in WNBA history, and the fourth-longest winning streak in league history. They were tough to beat at home at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, where they held a 15-1 record. The Sun went 2-3 without Jones who represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the FIBA (International Basketball Federation) Women’s Eurobasket 2021 in June.

As a team they were locked in, particularly after a loss in the inaugural Commissioner’s Cup Championship in August.

“By the time this season rolled around, I was chomping at the bit,” Jones wrote. “As a team, we just knew from the jump that it was title or bust, and I’m not even going to bring up how SLEPT ON we’ve been all season, especially after we lost in the Commissioner’s Cup. It would be petty to bring up how everybody was out on us after one bad game.”

It was a dominating season for the Bahamian. She averaged a double-double on the season at 19.4 points – fourth-best in the league – and a league-best 11.2 rebounds per game. She was one of two players to average a double-double on the season, the other being WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Sylvia Fowles of the Minnesota Lynx. Jones’ 8.7 defensive boards per game also led the league. She dished out 2.8 assists, and defensively, she was in the top 10 in the league with 1.3 blocked shots and 1.3 steals per game.

Those defensive numbers had her listed as tied for third for the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. Jones was named to the WNBA All-Defensive First Team for the second time in her career.

A week ago, Jones was unanimously chosen as the Associated Press’ (AP) WNBA Player of the Year.

For her league-best in rebounds this season, she won the league’s Peak Performer Award in that category – the third time in her career after doing so in 2017 and again in 2019.

Over the 27 games she played in this season, Jones secured a double-double in 18 of them to lead the league. Offensively, she scored in double-figures in all but one of those 27 games.

Jones tied a regular season career-high with 31 points in a 85-75 victory for the Sun over the Washington Mystics on August 31.

The sixth overall pick in the 2016 WNBA Draft made her third career All-Star appearance this season, and was a runner-up in the WNBA Three-Point Contest – her first time competing in that competition.

For her consistent efforts on the season, the Sun player was named WNBA Eastern Conference Player of the Month for May, August and September as the Sun posted a combined 18-2 win/loss record in those months.

In September, she averaged 15.4 points, 12 rebounds, three assists and two blocks per game to help the Sun finish the month at a perfect 5-0. In August, Jones helped the Sun finish 7-0, averaging 18.7 points, 11 rebounds and one block per contest. In May, Jones notched numbers of 20.3 points, 10.5 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game to help her team to a 6-2 record.

In addition to the three WNBA Eastern Conference Player of the Month awards, the former George Washington University standout also carted off four Eastern Conference Player of the Week awards.

In honor of being named the 2021 WNBA Most Valuable Player, Jones will receive $15,450 from the league and a specially designed trophy by Tiffany & Co.

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