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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
2008 was a series of did you see thats that are destined to become do you remembers.
By King Kaufman
Read more: Sports, Baseball, Olympics, NHL, NBA, Basketball, NCAA, Football, Major League Baseball, NFL, College Basketball, College Football, Ice Hockey, King Kaufman, 2008 Olympics, Sports Daily, 2008
Salon composite/Reuters photos
From left: David Tyree's against-the-helmet catch helped the New York Giants win the Super Bowl, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps were stars of the Beijing Olympics, and Kevin Garnett led the Boston Celtics to their first NBA title in 22 years.
Dec. 30, 2008 | Years from now, 2008 will probably be remembered as the year of an economic collapse so severe that even the usually recession-proof world of North American sports felt it. The NFL laid people off. That doesn't happen most years.
But for most of 2008, living through it, even as housing prices fell and the recession gathered, the sports year didn't feel like the Year of the Crash. Most of 2008 seemed to be about big sports stories actually living up to their hype.
It started with the New England Patriots chasing an undefeated season. They'd ended 2007 by winning an epic regular-season finale over the New York Giants, and a month later lined up as heavy favorites in the Super Bowl against the same team. Giants quarterback Eli Manning engineered a late touchdown drive that gave New York a stunning victory.
The highlight, Manning spinning away from the grasp of the Patriots pass rush, sprinting to the sideline and heaving the ball downfield, where David Tyree trapped the ball against his helmet and hung on while the great safety Rodney Harrison wrestled with him, was the signature football moment of the year and, so far, of the century. It might have been the single greatest play in Super Bowl history.
Like that, is how 2008 was. A series of breathtaking did you see thats destined to become do you remembers.
Swimmer Michael Phelps set out to win eight gold medals in the Beijing Olympics and succeeded. His seventh gold, tying Mark Spitz's record for one Games, was in the 100-meter butterfly. Trailing badly at the turn and still behind Serbian Milorad Cavic one body length from the wall, he somehow made up the distance on the last stroke, touching one-hundredth of a second before Cavic.
And that wasn't even the most electrifying moment of the Games. That honor belonged, pun and all, to Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who didn't just win the men's 100- and 200-meter gold medals, the first to do so since Carl Lewis in 1984, he did it in cartoonish, world-record-setting fashion and with a sparkling personality -- which drew fire from the International Olympic Committee's idiotic chieftain, Jacques Rogge.
Bolt was so rattled by Rogge's inanity that he went out and helped Jamaica win the four-by-100 gold, also in world-record time.
American Dara Torres became the first woman over 40 to swim in the Olympics and the first to swim in five of them, all the more remarkable because the five, dating to 1984, weren't consecutive. She won two silver medals in relays and another in the 50-meter freestyle, losing to gold medal-winner Britta Steffen by a Phelpsian hundredth of a second. "I'm thinking," she said afterward, "I shouldn't have filed my nails last night."
Overall the Olympics failed to live up to the hype in one good way. After a few American athletes were censured for arriving with masks on to filter out the pollution, fears of athletes being overcome by Beijing's horrible air quality were not realized. American television viewers, however, were nearly suffocated by NBC's ceaseless broadcasting of synchronized diving and beach volleyball.
In between, glimpses were caught of the U.S. men and women winning basketball gold, and the usual drama in the gymnastics arena. China dominated the men's competition and won the women's team all-around, but Americans Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson went gold-silver in the individual all-around, and Johnson, a darling of the pre-Games buildup, won gold on the balance beam.
The Euro 2008 soccer tournament lived up to its billing thanks in large part to a thrilling underdog run by Turkey, which staged dramatic comebacks against Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Croatia before falling to Germany in the semifinals. Spain, an exciting, attacking team -- two concepts often lacking in international soccer -- beat Germany for the cup.
Kansas guard Mario Chalmers hit a 3-pointer in the final seconds to cap a Jayhawks comeback against Memphis in the NCAA men's basketball Tournament Championship Game, forcing an overtime, which Kansas dominated for the title.
That finished off a Tournament that was outstanding even by its own high standards, with just enough upsets to make it interesting and a deep run by an exciting -- and underseeded -- No. 10, Davidson, but the best teams were left standing at the end. The Final Four was the first ever to feature all four top seeds.
In the women's Tournament, the sport's colossus, Tennessee, won yet another title, led by Candace Parker, the game's best player. Parker was taken first in the WNBA draft by the Los Angeles Sparks, scored 34 points in her first game, and went on to be named Rookie of the Year. Now that's living up to the hype.
The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers spent the 2007-08 season threatening to renew their old NBA Finals rivalry, and sure enough, this being the year that anticipation paid off, they did. The offseason acquisition of Kevin Garnett was the centerpiece of the Celtics' return to prominence. Boston started strong and never let up.
The Lakers had been fringe contenders for a while but became championship caliber when they made a one-sided trade for Memphis Grizzlies star Pao Gasol. Even without talented young center Andrew Bynum, who was injured during the season, the Lakers won the Western Conference behind Gasol and Kobe Bryant. But they proved too soft to be a match for the Celtics, who took the Finals in six games and won the title for the first time since 1986.
