USA Basketball announced Tuesday that Aaron Gordon was awarded the Male Athlete of the Year honor for 2013 after the Arizona forward served on the 2013 FIBA Under-19 Championship squad and the 2013 Nike Hoops Summit.
Gordon won the U-19 MVP award despite coming off the bench. He still led Team USA with 12.6 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.0 steals per game in leading it to the gold medal.
"Aaron is a great player, and the thing I really give him and the rest of the players credit for is that every single one of those guys is a high-profile player and they all knew going in that there was going to be some form of sacrifice that was going to have to take place for us to win," said Billy Donovan, USA and University of Florida head coach. "No one was going to score 25 points, no one was going to play 35 minutes, it had to be a collective group effort and their buy-in ability toward that was tremendous."
So add Gordon's name to an impressive list of basketball players to have won the award. LeBron James (2012), Jabari Parker (2011), Kevin Durant (2010), James McAdoo (2009) and the entire U.S. men's national squad (2008) were the last five winners of the honor.