Year in Review: Sports

Year in Review: Sports

The year in sports is a tough subject to break down in a blog so I will be making it a little easier on myself by choosing, what I think, are the biggest stories from most of the major sports. I will also recap the champions of the major North American sports leagues and highlight some of the better plays from each.

Champions

NBA - Miami Heat

The Heat dismantled the OKC Thunder in 5 games and takes home the first championship since Lebron, Wade and Bosh teamed up. Lebron also secured the MVP with play that had every media member saying he had made the leap that he needed to be the best player in the league.

NFL - New York Giants

The New York Giants upset the New England Patriots in the 46^th annual Superbowl. That’s not all the Giants also broke the record for having the lowest regular season record (9-7) for a team that won the Superbowl.

NHL - LA Kings

After being predicted to be the best team in the NHL during the 2011-12 season, they started off the year and only managed to get into the playoffs in the eighth seed. They ended up losing only 4(out of 20) games on their way to becoming Stanley Cup Champions.

CFL - Toronto Argonauts

Like any season in the CFL the Grey Cup is always up for grabs, even if you didn’t play so well all season. This year’s champion is just more proof of that with the 9-9 Toronto Argo’s out playing the 12-6 Calgary Stampeders to win their 16^th Grey Cup.

MLB - San Franscisco Giants

I don’t watch a lot of baseball. Barry Bonds use to play for them right? Does that mean they all do steroids? Are steroids still a big deal in the MLB?

The Giants winning the MLB championship seems like a good thing because it’s not the Yankees or Red Socks. Am I right, baseball fans?

Big Stories (and highlights) of 2012

NBA

The Stern and Lake Show

The two biggest stories of the NBA in 2012 are the announced retirement of one of the longest running NBA commissioners of all time and all the trades he allowed and didn’t allow.

David Stern will have been commissioner for 30 years when he retires in February of 2013. So, why is an announced retirement such big news? Well, it’s because the man has not made a great name for himself and created most of the problems the NBA has to deal with today. All we can hope for is that Adam Silver is a little more subtle when he’s screwing all the fans over.

Secondly all the “names” that were traded this offseason is a pretty big deal. There was Harden, Bynum, Joe Johnson, Lin, Igoudala and those weren’t even the biggest moves of the year. The honors for that go to the Los Angeles Lakers who brought in a 2 time MVP (Steve Nash) and a 3 time NBA Defensive player of the year (Dwight Howard), not only that they had a chance to hire arguably the greatest coach of all time(Phil Jackson). Add that to Kobe Bryant, statistically one of the best players of all time, and Pau Gasol an Olympic Silver medalist and one of the top five centers in the league, you would think you had a great team right? Well Nash is injured, Dwight is recovering from surgery, Pau is not playing at an all star level and they lose when ever Kobe score more than 30 points (they are 1 -11 in those situations). Will they put it together and make the playoffs? Hopefully, all us Canadians want to see in Steve Nash get a ring.

NFL

Tragedy

This year in the NFL has been all about tragedies. There was a scandal where coaches were taped telling players to injure certain layers on the teams. There was a suicide by a man that was so physically and mentally destroyed from football that he shot himself in the chest so his brain could be used in the research of concussions. There was a car crash were the passenger (an NFL player) was killed and the driver (another NFL player) was convicted of intoxicated man slaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison. There was even a NFL player that went to the extreme and killed his wife and then himself. Football is one of the most dangerous sports and after a year like this something definitely needs to change.

(I did not name or really talk about any incident specifically because I do not feel comfortable speaking about something I know very little of. Also this is not the forum or way to talk about matters as serious as many of those were. Most or all of the stories can be read about on the internet. Thank you and now some NFL highlights of the year!)

NHL

Long Live the Kin…(LOCKEDOUT!)

After another great season Gary Bettman and the owners cannot figured out a way to make up for their own mistakes and for the second time in six years the NHL is locked out again. This section of the blog post has now been lockout as well. (Oh Sid the Kid’s been playing goalie though.)

CFL

CFLame

What can I say about the Canadian Football League in 2012… Here are some highlights.

MLB

Money, Money, Money

I don’t follow baseball (if you didn’t know) so here is a list of some of the contracts signed in 2012.

Albert Pujols 10 year 240 million

Joey Votto 10 years 225 million

Prince Fielder 9 years 214 million

Matt Kemp 8 years 160 million

Josh Hamilton 5 year 125 million

That’s just crazy.   

Olympics

The Olympics are always one of the biggest stories of the year when they are put on. This year was no different the opening ceremony was directed by a movie director and had a certain Hollywood feel to it with all the set pieces. The ceremony as a whole was quite amazing especially when the Olympic rings come together above the smoke stacks during the industrial revolution part of it.

The actual Olympics weren’t that news worthy with the US and China coming away one and two in the medal count. A couple athletes made names for themselves (Rosannagh Maclennan of Canada and Gabrielle Douglas of the US) There were also those that solidified there place in the history books (Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt).

Boxing

Paquiao Goes Down

This is another sport I don’t follow to closely but easily the biggest story of the year has to be Mr. Paqiauo’s downfall. He had a close loss earlier in the year and then he gets smashed in his third fight with Marquez who cleans his clock. This wasn’t his year that’s for sure.

MMA

Dana Red Hot

A lot of stuff happened in the UFC and MMA world this year. The thing is so much stuff happened that in kind of fell off the radar. It was like an oversaturation of the market. Dana White has a plethora of fighters and he seems to be having a little trouble managing who fights and when. Being that MMA is such a physical sport it doesn’t help that there are so many injuries. Surprisingly though the story of the year in the MMA world is not that there were too many events but that one of them was cancelled completely. UFC 151 had to be cancelled due to an injury to Jon Jones’ initial opponent (Dan Henderson) and the refusal of Jon Jones to fight the remplacement fighter (Chael Sonnen) on short notice. Let’s just say Dana wasn’t too happy about the whole situation.

Cycling

Lance Strong Armed

Lance Armstrong, the one testiculed former beau of Sheryl Crow, has had all of his seven Tour de France wins removed from the records when he decided to drop his fight against the charges of using performance enhancing drugs during those races. It’s a shame that a man with one ball can’t get a break these days.

Equestrian

Another Horse Didn’t Win The Triple Crown