NEW YORK — Las Vegas Aces star guard Chelsea Gray was named the Unrivaled League MVP on Monday.
Gray, who plays for Rose BC, accepted the award before Monday’s semifinal games in the 3-on-3 league at sold-out Barclays Center.
“I want to say thank you to everyone who voted,” Gray said. “I love this game. Want to be great every night, and that’s always my goal. Women’s basketball is where it’s at, shows by all you guys coming out and watching us compete every single night.”
Gray, who won Unrivaled’s 1-on-1 tournament last month, averaged 24.2 points, 5.6 rebounds and 6.1 assists. She broke her own league single-season assists record with 85 in 14 games.
The 33-year-old had nine games with 20 or more points and 10 games with five or more assists. She also tied the league single-game 3-pointers record with 10.
A former Aces star, Kelsey Plum of the Los Angeles Sparks, scored 31 points to lead the No. 1-seeded Phantom BC to the championship game with an 83-75 win over Vinyl. Former Aces player Dearica Hamby, who also plays for the Sparks, led Vinyl with 30 points.
In the other semifinal, Arike Ogunbowale celebrated her 29th birthday by hitting a decisive 3-pointer to lift the second-seeded Mist to a 73-69 victory over Breeze.
The championship game will be played Wednesday at Unrivaled’s home arena in Miami. The winning team will take home a prize pool of $600,000 that will be split among its six players.
After the success of taking the league to Philadelphia in late January for a weekend that drew more than 21,490 fans, Unrivaled moved the semifinals to New York a few weeks ago.
Monday’s star-studded sellout crowd of 18,261 included basketball greats Carmelo Anthony and Sue Bird, actors Ashton Kutcher and Jason Sudeikis, and gold medal-winning U.S. hockey player Hilary Knight.