A Decade in Review

The first decade of the 21st century is coming to an end. And what a decade it has been! The sporting world has seen its share of drama and emotion in the last 10 years and I am sure it will offer many more magical moments in the years and decades to come. But if we look back at the decade that has gone by, we would be recalling three Olympics, two soccer World Cups, 40 Grand Slams and 10 NBA championships.

As the action has been of the highest order, so has been its lasting impression on the minds of all the fans. All sports have created their icons or heroes and for many the decade saw the passing of the torch from one master to another.

As the world witnessed the end of the Sampras era, it also saw the rise of the Federer kingdom, take over the tennis world. Moving to athletics, which was marred by the use of drugs and other banned substances in the last decade, the latter part produced an athlete of unmatched quality and speed. Usain Bolt changed the face of track and field and also broke a lot of records.

Coming now to the NBA! The last decade belonged to only one man --- Michael Jordan. But after ‘Air Jordan’ landed, the basketball world sat up to three worthy replacements --- Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James --- all three of whom have proved their mettle and also their might as worthy contenders to take over the throne as player of the new decade. But as LeBron is yet to win a championship, I will just remove him off the list for this decade. It just leaves us with Shaq and Kobe! But let’s just delay this decision for some time now.

As I surfed through the NBA website, I came across an ‘All Decade’ feature. After a detailed look of the content, I decided to do a review and verdict of some of the categories. Let’s start with the nominees for the ‘Best Dunk’ and the ‘Best Playoff Drama – Individual’ category.

From the selected six nominations for the best dunk of the decade, I have my two personal favourites --- Tracy McGrady of the Houston Rockets slamming a monster dunk and LeBron James dunking over the entire Celtics team --- to choose a winner from these two is very difficult, but I’ll give it to McGrady for sheer velocity of the dunk (I sat up from my chair after watching it on video!).

Now for the best playoff drama – individual, again six nominations, but for this I have a clear favourite. Derek Fisher --- after spending the whole day in New York for his daughters’ eye surgery to remove eye cancer --- he walks onto the court minutes before a match and leads the Jazz to an inspirational win. That is some character! So these were two personal favourites from these categories. I will also review the other nominations and also pick my personal star of the decade.