What the 2026 Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award recognizes

The award has a defined on-court purpose

The Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award annually recognizes a player who exemplifies ethical behavior, fair play and integrity on the court. The WNBA names the award for Kim Perrot, a Houston Comets guard who died in 1999. The criteria describe conduct during competition rather than a scoring title or a team finish.

Nneka Ogwumike received the 2026 award in her final WNBA season. She received 38 votes from a national panel of 74 sportswriters and broadcasters. Rebecca Allen finished second with seven votes and Kelsey Mitchell placed third with six. Veronica Burton and Michaela Onyenwere tied for fourth with four votes each. The total records how the panel ranked the candidates, while the award definition states what those votes were intended to recognize.

A fifth win extended Ogwumike’s own record

This was Ogwumike’s fifth Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award and her second consecutive win, extending the league record. No other player has received it five times. Each selection is made for an individual season, so the count is a career record rather than a cumulative award.

Some award years list co-winners: Sue Bird and Ruth Riley shared the 2011 honor, while Tamika Catchings and Swin Cash shared it in 2013. The history therefore counts recipients as well as award years; Ogwumike’s five is a player count across separate selections.

The five wins came with two franchises. Ogwumike’s first three awards were with the Sparks from 2019 through 2021; the 2025 award came while she played for Seattle, and the 2026 honor returned to Los Angeles. The award announcement gives that sequence, while the separate WNBA history page currently lists recipients through 2024. The first and latest wins are seven years apart, and the last two came in consecutive seasons.

Her final season included substantial production

Ogwumike averaged 17.3 points, 9.0 rebounds and a career-high 3.1 assists in 43 games. She started every game she played and led the Sparks in total points and rebounds, according to the WNBA release. Those numbers describe the workload and production behind the award year.

They also help place the sportsmanship honor beside the rest of her career. The WNBA release says she finished fourth in league history in points with 8,047 and steals with 718, and third in rebounds with 3,657. Ogwumike was the only player with at least 7,000 career points and a career field-goal percentage of at least 50 percent. The release also identifies her as the WNBA All-Star Game’s career-points record-holder, a mark separate from her 11 selections. These records describe her play over many seasons, while the award vote concerns one season’s conduct.

A separate Sparks retirement announcement gives wider career context. Los Angeles drafted Ogwumike No. 1 overall in 2012; she became Rookie of the Year that season and the 2016 MVP and champion. The team lists 11 All-Star selections, eight All-WNBA selections and seven All-Defensive selections; Ogwumike also joined The W25, the WNBA’s list of 25 greatest players for its 25th anniversary. She spent 13 of her 15 WNBA seasons with the Sparks and retired as the franchise leader in scoring, field goals, steals and double-doubles. These are career milestones, separate from the award’s on-court standard.

Her players’ union role is separate from the award

Ogwumike has served as president of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association since 2016. That is an off-court leadership role. The Kim Perrot award is specifically described as recognizing behavior on the court. The two facts can appear in a career account without being treated as the same kind of contribution.

The WNBA identifies 2026 as her 15th and final playing season, and the Sparks announced her plan to retire afterward. The public release does not say whether her WNBPA presidency ends on the same date. The Sparks' announcement says WNBA players secured a record salary increase from one CBA to the next, with expanded benefits and protections during her tenure; it describes collective union gains, separate from the sportsmanship vote.

The vote was clear, though not unanimous

Beyond the top finishers, the WNBA table lists Alysha Clark with three votes; Maya Caldwell, Natisha Hiedeman, Karlie Samuelson, Brittney Sykes and Elizabeth Williams with two each; and Naz Hillmon and Charlisse Leger-Walker with one apiece. Those eight lower rows account for the remaining 15 votes, completing the published distribution. The remaining support is spread across the field rather than concentrated in one additional candidate.

Using the published totals,38 of 74 is about 51.4 percent. Half the panel would be 37 votes, so Ogwumike passed that mark by one vote. Her lead over the runner-up was 31 votes. The result was therefore both a majority of the panel and a wide lead over the next candidate, while 36 voters selected someone else.

The award’s criteria are qualitative: ethical behavior, fair play and integrity on court. The WNBA publishes candidate names and vote totals but not a scoring formula or individual voter rationales. The ballot can show the panel’s choice; it cannot explain how each voter applied the standard to specific plays.

Statistics and career honors supply context for what Ogwumike achieved as a player; they cannot score the award’s qualitative criteria. The release gives the voters’ result and the standard but no examples that tie the choice to a particular play. Keeping those records separate preserves the difference between sporting achievement and the behavior the award is meant to recognize.

Kim Perrot’s name connects the award to league history

Kim Perrot played for the Houston Comets and helped them win the first two WNBA championships, in 1997 and 1998. The league renamed its sportsmanship award in her honor in 2000, following her death at age 32. The official history page lists the winners across the award’s earlier years.

The WNBA history page records Haixia Zheng of the Los Angeles Sparks as the inaugural recipient in 1997. Its 2000 entry is the first to carry Perrot’s name. The list follows winners across different teams and eras, putting Ogwumike’s five selections in a longer record that began before her career.

The result is specific to one panel and one season

The 2026 vote establishes that Ogwumike received the most votes among the listed candidates. It also shows the panel’s published criterion and her final-season statistics. It does not provide a game-by-game measure of sportsmanship or a complete record of how each voter applied the definition.

For readers, the strongest account keeps those parts together: a stated award standard, a recorded vote, her final-season line and the league’s career record. Ogwumike’s fifth honor is a rare result in the award’s history. The public material supports that exact claim and leaves the panel’s individual reasoning undisclosed.