Best of 2012 in the world of sports
- Best athlete of the year? How about tennis star Serena Williams?
- Most interesting? NBA point guard Jeremy Lin?
- Top accomplisment? Miguel Cabrera winning the Triple Crown?
This year featured historic performances, compelling figures and the most precocious group of athletes in recent memory. David Leon Moore of USA TODAY Sports picks the best of the best:
Top accomplishment of 2012?
Michael Phelps' Olympic swimming career was amazing. He won 22 medals, 18 gold, both are Olympic records.
Also amazing is Usain Bolt's track career. His double triple — winning the Olympic 100, 200 and 4x100 relay in 2008 and 2012 — is one of the most remarkable accomplishments in Olympic history.
Their booty came over a span of years, though, more impressive because of the repeat factor. In 2012 they basically accomplished what they had done in 2008.
Both are worthy winners of this category. But in just the calendar year 2012, nobody in sports did anything more impressive — and historic — than Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera, the last Triple Crown winner since the Boston Red Sox's Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
Cabrera, a 29-year-old Venezuelan, led the American League with a .330 batting average, 44 home runs and 139 RBI.
In this steroid era, sluggers tended to lengthen swings and go for homers; batting averages suffered. Cabrera's ability to combine a high average with lots of power made it a year to remember for him and baseball.
Best team of 2012?
The Miami Heat were 46-20 in the shortened regular season, then won 16 of 23 playoff games in their march to the NBA title, the first for LeBron James, who had some memorable performances.
In Game 7 of the Eastern finals against the Boston Celtics, James, Dwyane Wade and, off the bench, Chris Bosh, came up big. James had 31 points and 12 rebounds. Wade had 23 points, six assists and six rebounds and Bosh had 19 points and eight rebounds. Miami's defense clamped down on the Celtics, the Heat winning 101-88.
Then they beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 4-1 in the Finals, when The Big Three, especially James, was again magnificent.
When they played like that, the Heat were the best team in the NBA, and the best team anywhere in 2012.
Perhaps the best argument to the Heat comes from Waco, Texas, where the Baylor Lady Bears, led by center Brittney Griner, forged perfection, going 40-0 to win the NCAA women's basketball championship, crushing Notre Dame by 19 in the final.
The men's NCAA champ was also impressive, Kentucky going 38-2 and, behind Anthony Davis' dominance in the middle, winning coach John Calipari's first national title.
Notre Dame football logged a perfect regular season but wasn't convincing enough to make the Irish the favorites against one-loss Alabama in next month's BCS title game.
The U.S. women's gymnastics team was almost perfect, knocking off the Russians and winning team gold for the first time since 1996. They were bouncy, and they were skilled, but none of them could guard LeBron.
Best athlete of 2012?
A truly loaded field:
There's Bolt, electrifying the Olympics again with his signature speed, style and showmanship. There's James, who reached a level few in the NBA have. There's Adrian Peterson, who made a run at Eric Dickerson's single-season rushing record and left no doubt who is the NFL's best running back.
At the Olympics, Phelps said goodbye with 22 career medals while 17-year-old swimmer Missy Franklin said hello with five medals, four gold, and the promise of many more to come in 2016.
But the one who rose slightly above the others in 2012 was tennis star Serena Williams, who turned 31 in September and turned the major playing courts of the world into a showcase just for her.
Williams won her fifth Wimbledon, where she had a tournament-record 24 aces against second-seeded Victoria Azarenka. Williams won her fourth U.S. Open, where she was so dominant that at one point she won 23 consecutive games.
In-between, she headed back to the Wimbledon grounds for the Olympics, where she was also triumphant, winning her first Olympic singles title by demolishing Maria Sharapova 6-0, 6-1 in the final. She won 81% of her games in the Olympic tournament and did not lose a set.
She finished up winning her third WTA Championships, her seventh title of the year, and being voted WTA Player of the Year for the fourth time.
Most interesting of 2012?
Oscar Pistorius was interesting in both an inspirational and controversial way. South Africa's "Blade Runner," an elite-level quarter-miler despite being a double below-knee amputee, lifted spirits around the world with his mere presence at the Summer Games. Alas, there were some who thought his carbon fiber blades were actually an advantage.
By contrast, American hurdler Lolo Jones and U.S. soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo were almost as much sideshows as Olympic competitors. Both drew major internet attention.
Jones did for the controversy over her major marketing campaign and good looks vs. her modest results, and for tweeting about her virginity.
Solo did for her never-dull off-the-pitch life, including saying she went on the Today show drunk, tweeting critical remarks about Olympics soccer commentator Brandi Chastain and, after the Olympics, showing up in a police report when her boyfriend, former football player Jerramy Stevens, was arrested in November on investigation of assault after an altercation that left Solo injured. He was not charged, and he and Solo got married the next day.
That's a lot of interest, and doesn't even include the all-year soap opera/failing football career of Tim Tebow.
But if you want to lift "interesting" to the point of "compelling," you just couldn't beat Linsanity.
Undrafted point guard Jeremy Lin, the NBA's first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent, coming out of Harvard, was at the end of the injury-riddled New York Knicks' bench Feb. 3. Desperate for a live body, Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni played Lin the next night, and so began an 18-day-long Walter Mitty dream life that was as shocking as it was entertaining.
On Feb. 4, off the bench, Lin had career highs of 25 points and seven assists against Deron Williams in a win against the New Jersey Nets. The next game, his first start, Lin had 28 and eight assists and the Knicks won again. On Feb. 10, he had 38 points, seven assists against the Los Angeles Lakers, outdueling Kobe Bryant (34 points) and leading another win.
In an 11-game stretch, the previously anonymous Lin averaged 23.9 points and 9.2 assists, shot 50% and the Knicks went 9-2.
The Knicks then changed coaches to Mike Woodson and Linsanity waned. Lin was allowed to seek a deal that landed him with the Houston Rockets after the season.
His stardom is muted now, but for those who at this time of the year truly believe and cling to miracles in their hearts, Linsanity lives!
Brightest future for rookie?
It's hard to have a much brighter future than playing one season and having a lot of people believe you are the best in major league baseball.
But so it is with Mike Trout, the Los Angeles Angels' phenomenal outfielder, the AL Rookie of the Year and MVP runner-up to Cabrera.
Trout's production was off the charts. Leading off, Trout hit .326 with 30 homers, 83 RBI, 49 stolen bases and 129 runs scored. He is 21, and better so far than the other baseball phenom, the Washington Nationals' Bryce Harper, 20.
The NFL produced the best rookie quarterbacks since maybe the 1983 draft of John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. At the top were Andrew Luck, 23, and Robert Griffin III, 22. Both seemed better than advertised, if that were possible.
The future should also be very kind to Texas A&M's irrepressible quarterback Johnny Manziel, 20, the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy.
But Trout is the big fish in this category.
Most disliked sports figure of 2012?
The NFL replacement refs were a mess in some games, most notably the botched touchdown call at the end that cost the Green Bay Packers a victory against the Seattle Seahawks.
But disliked? Actually, some people began to look forward to the next gaffe, in a Saturday Night Live parody kind of way. And besides, these guys were asked to do something beyond their experience level. They were set up to fail.
Parody them? Sure. But most disliked? No.
Now, the guy that set up the replacement ref system – commissioner Roger Goodell – now there's a candidate for most disliked. Goodell's fumbles included the refs fiasco as well as the awkward, controversial handling of penalties to the New Orleans Saints coaches and players over a bounty system investigation.
At least Goodell's sport played games. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman saw labor negotiations drag on and on and no hockey for the 2012-13 season was played through December.
Of course, commissioners are set up to be disliked, anyway. They often can't please fans or players or both. It's hard in their jobs not to make people mad.
Speaking of making people mad, Bobby Valentine certainly had an interesting year as the manager of the Red Sox. He might have been the most disliked man in the Sox clubhouse, but certainly not in the sports world at large.
No, the "winner" in this category is Lance Armstrong. We know, Armstrong has been a champion fundraiser for cancer research, and he is to be praised for that.
But on the road, where his sport was conducted and where he raced to false glory for many years, he was proven to be a liar and a cheat of epic proportions.
No topping that.