As 2024 comes to a close, it’s time to look back on the year in sports.
The last 12 months have been marked by some unforgettable highlights, breakout stars, and teams who finally reached the pinnacle of their sports.
After 11 National League West titles in 12 years, the Los Angeles Dodgers got over the top and won a World Series title in a full season. The Boston Celtics claimed their 18th NBA title after making six Eastern Conference Finals appearances in eight years. Alas, it was more of the same in the NFL; the Kansas City Chiefs extended their dynasty at least one more season.
But storylines aren’t just woven across full seasons. Fundamentally, sports are battles of attrition that take place over the time between tip-off and buzzer, kick-off and whistle, and first pitch and last.
Picking standout teams is easy because they usually have silverware to show for it. Picking individual games that tell the tale of 2024 is harder.
Here’s five that stick out to me:
5. November 7: Baltimore Ravens 35, Cincinnati Bengals 34
On Thursday Night Football, the Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati Bengals put on a show. Two of the best quarterbacks in the league — two-time MVP Lamar Jackson and Bengals signal-caller Joe Burrow — battled tit-for-tat in a game that featured a missed extra point, a gutsy two-point conversion attempt for the win, and one of Jackson’s most impressive comebacks of his career.
This game was buoyed by individual star power. Cincinnati wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase caught 11 passes for 264 yards and three touchdowns, the 19th-most prolific receiving performance in NFL history. Jackson threw for an efficient 290 yards and four touchdowns and arguably wasn’t even the best quarterback on the field, as Burrow put up 428 yards and four scores of his own.
The game didn’t have the makings of an instant classic at halftime, with the Bengals going into the break leading 14-7. But Chase broke things wide open with a 67-yard score on Cincinnati’s first play in the second half to extend the Bengals’ lead to 14. The Ravens eventually got one back after Cincinnati running back Chase Brown coughed it up in his own territory.
Then, the offensive explosion began. Here are all the fourth-quarter possessions:
Touchdown. Turnover on downs. Touchdown. Touchdown. Touchdown. Touchdown.
In the fourth quarter, two of the league’s most gifted players went back-and-forth in an epic, high-stakes game of “anything you can do, I can do better”. The league’s greatest-ever kicker, Justin Tucker, missed an extra point and forced Jackson to keep it himself for a two-point conversion later in the game, portending Tucker’s decline and showcasing Jackson’s brilliance. With 38 seconds to play, Burrow found Chase for what looked to be a game-tying score, but Bengals head coach Zac Taylor opted to go for two instead of playing for overtime.
It fell incomplete. The Baltimore crowd exploded in jubilation and Cincinnati trudged dejectedly off the field, wondering, “What if?”
4. April 1: Iowa Hawkeyes 94, LSU Tigers 87
2024 might go down as the Year of the WNBA.
While NBA ratings have declined precipitously from last season, WNBA ratings are on the rise and even rival NBA games for television viewership. Nothing exemplified this trend better than April 1, when Caitlin Clark arrived onto the national conscience.
Of course, Clark had been stellar throughout her four-year career at Iowa, averaging 28.4 points, 7.1 rebounds, and 8.2 assists and breaking Pete Maravich’s 54-year-old record for the most points scored in a college career.
During her senior year, the rivalry between Clark and LSU center Angel Reese — one of the best rebounders in NCAA history — took center stage. The two women met in the Elite Eight of the 2024 NCAA Tournament in a rematch of the previous season’s championship, drawing 16 million viewers and making it easily the most-watched women’s college basketball game of all time.
It didn’t disappoint. Iowa and LSU went back and forth for the entire first half, with neither team taking more than a nine-point lead. Clark was firing away with reckless abandon and zipping flashy passes to her teammates, and Reese was a dominant interior force. The Hawkeyes and Tigers went into the half tied at 45.
Then, in the third quarter, Clark broke the game wide open with a flurry of deep threes reminiscent only of Stephen Curry, staking Iowa to an 11-point lead that it never relinquished. The icing on the cake was a step-back from five feet beyond the arc for her ninth three-pointer of the contest, tying the single-game record in an NCAA tournament game.
The stat lines were monstrous: Clark finished with 41 points and 12 assists, and Reese had 17 points and 20 rebounds.
The impact was larger. Beyond showcasing Clark’s and Reese’s talents to a national audience, April’s Iowa-LSU clash demonstrated that women’s basketball has arrived — and it’s here to stay.
3. February 11: Kansas City Chiefs 25, San Francisco 49ers 22
The biggest game in America’s most popular sport was always going to be a huge deal. The fact that Super Bowl LVIII was only second overtime contest in the game’s history was merely the cherry on top.
If there was any doubt that the Kansas City Chiefs were forming a dynasty, Patrick Mahomes put it to rest. With three seconds left in overtime, Mahomes found wide receiver Mecole Hardman in the flat near the right sideline for a game-winning touchdown as confetti fell on Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. It was the Chiefs’ second straight Super Bowl win and third in the last five years, as they became the first repeat champions since the 2004-05 New England Patriots.
As has so often been the case throughout Kansas City’s dynasty, it wasn’t always pretty. The first half was a sloppy mess, with nearly as many fumbles as points through the first quarter and a half. All momentum looked to be swinging in San Francisco’s favor when wide receiver Jauan Jennings found running back Christian McCaffrey on a trick play for a 21-yard score to extend the 49ers lead to 10 near the end of the first half.
Still, Mahomes and the Chiefs are inevitable. Kansas City got three points back with a 13-play, 65-yard drive to avoid being held scoreless in the first half. Late in the third quarter, a muffed punt by San Francisco’s Darrell Luter Jr. finally gave the Chiefs the opportunity they needed, and Mahomes took advantage with a 16-yard touchdown pass to Marquez Valdez-Scantling.
San Francisco answered with a 10-yard pass from quarterback Brock Purdy to Jennings, although Kansas City blocked the extra point attempt to keep the 49ers’ lead at three. Then, the teams traded field goals until the clock hit quadruple zeroes, sending the Super Bowl into overtime for the first time since 2017. It was the first overtime contest since a 2023 rule change ensured that both teams would have the chance to possess the ball regardless of the first team’s outcome.
San Francisco put the pressure on, embarking on a 13-play, 66-yard drive that brought it to the Chiefs’ nine-yard line. But from there, Kansas City’s defensive front held strong and forced the 49ers to settle for a 24-yard Jake Moody field goal and setting the stage for Mahomes to win the game outright.
There were some nervy moments on the Chiefs’ final drive, to be certain. Running back Isaiah Pacheco was stuffed on a third-and-1, giving San Francisco an opportunity to win the game with a stop. Mahomes took matters into his own hands, rushing for eight yards to convert the fourth down, and from there, he never looked back, bringing Kansas City to the cusp of victory.
There was one last decision to make. Before the final play, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid had the opportunity to kick a field goal to send the game into a second overtime. Instead, he trusted his quarterback to deliver a knockout punch, turning a 50-50 proposition either into certain victory or certain defeat. The rest is history.
2. August 10: United States 98, France 87
On August 10, the NBA’s present met its future. And, under the bright lights of Accor Arena in Paris with the loftiest prize in sports on the line, Stephen Curry and LeBron James proved that the younger generation might have to wait just a little bit longer for its moment to shine.
In his storied 16-year career, the one thing missing from Curry’s resume was an Olympic gold medal. The one thing missing from James’ was to play — and win — with Curry. Even the eight-foot wingspan of Victor Wembanyama couldn’t block the party.
With international superstars like Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Wembanyama coming into the NBA in recent years, the United States might be losing its hegemonic position in world basketball. All the chatter led USA Basketball to assemble arguably its strongest roster ever, pairing Curry and James with Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, and Joel Embiid, among others. Expectations for the competition were high coming into France, especially with the host nation boasting a strong roster in its own right.
Team USA didn’t make it easy. In fact, it almost didn’t make it to the gold medal match at all, falling behind by 17 points to Jokić’s Serbia in the semifinals and requiring a flurry of Curry fourth-quarter threes and a James triple-double in order to edge out the Balkan nation, 95-91. If not for the massive stakes presented by the fact that USA vs. France was a rematch of the 2021 gold-medal game in Tokyo and the fact that Paris was hosting the Games, the semifinal would’ve easily made this list.
In the final, Team USA had the edge for most of the game, sparked by a run on either side of halftime to extend a one-point lead to 14. Then, France went on a charge, led by Wembanyama and veteran Evan Fournier, to cut the United States’ lead to three with just under three minutes remaining. With the Parisian crowd amped up, it was up to one man to silence it.
Curry delivered, draining four threes in quick succession, each more audacious than the last. After Wembanyama gave France an ounce of hope with his own three-pointer to cut the Americans’ lead to six with just under a minute to play, Curry painted an image that will forever be etched into his Hall of Fame legacy.
With 37 seconds left, Curry was double-teamed by France’s Fournier and Nicolas Batum on the right wing with Durant and James wide open on the left. But instead of passing it to either, Curry stepped back and lofted a high-arcing three over the outstretched fingertips of Batum, splashing it through the net and hitting his signature night-night celebration on his way back down the court.
Night night, indeed. Wembanyama may one day be the best basketball player in the world, and Team USA will surely have stiff competition in 2028, but on that night in Paris, Curry highlighted that the epicenter of basketball is still located in the United States.
1. October 25: Los Angeles Dodgers 6, New York Yankees 3
The World Series is known simply by a three-word moniker: The Fall Classic. On October 25, the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers delivered just that.
The stakes were already sky-high going into the World Series, the MLB’s first between its two most valuable franchises since 1981. The 98-64 Dodgers had been the best team in the league all season, with the 94-68 Yankees close behind them. Both rosters were studded with stars, from Los Angeles’ Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani to New York’s Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Juan Soto. After years of playoff disappointments from both teams, the 2024 Fall Classic presented an opportunity for one of the two to finally get over the hump.
Offense was slow for the first four innings of the game, with both the Dodgers’ Jack Flaherty and the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole getting off to hot starts. In the bottom of the first, Los Angeles stranded Freeman on third after a two-out triple, but that was about the only potent offensive threat in the game’s early going.
Finally, the Dodgers struck first, as a Will Smith sacrifice fly scored Kike Hernández, who had tripled with one out in the bottom of the fifth. But the Yankees answered back through the top of their order, with a Soto single and a no-doubter by Stanton to take a 2-1 lead. They threatened to make it more, but reliever Anthony Banda managed to strike out former Dodger Alex Verdugo with the bases loaded to limit the damage.
Still, Los Angeles squandered a golden opportunity when Tommy Edman hit a leadoff double to open the bottom of the sixth with the top of the order coming up and Ohtani, Betts and Freeman couldn’t bring him home. Then, in the seventh, after a Teoscar Hernández single and a Max Muncy hit by pitch put the tying run in scoring position with no outs once again, Smith popped out and Gavin Lux grounded out to strand Hernández 90 feet from the plate.
It was always going to be down to Ohtani to get the Dodgers back in the game. With one out in the eighth, the three-time MVP — who signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with Los Angeles in free agency last December — doubled to right and advanced to third on Soto’s throwing error. From there, a Betts flyout was deep enough for Ohtani to tag up and send the game to extra innings.
New York took the lead in the top of the tenth thanks to midseason acquisition Jazz Chisholm Jr., who singled with one out, then stole second and third. Then, Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe grounded into a fielder’s choice, allowing Chisholm to dash home and put the Dodgers on the back foot.
Needing a run to extend the ballgame, Los Angeles managed to get two men aboard with one out after Lux walked and Edman reached on an infield single. Ohtani then advanced each of them a base with a foul-out, and instead of allowing Nestor Cortes to face Betts, New York manager Aaron Boone opted to walk him intentionally, loading the bases for Freeman with two outs.
A month earlier, Freeman had hobbled off the field in one of the last games of the regular season with a sprained ankle. The injury clearly affected him in the first two rounds of the postseason, where he hit just .212 and sat out two games across series against the San Diego Padres and New York Mets. He had been one-for-four up to that point in the game.
The tension lasted just one pitch. On Cortes’ first offering — a 93-mile-per-hour fastball on the inner half of the plate — Freeman swung and unleashed a rocket that traveled 413 feet into the right-field pavilion, sending the Dodger Stadium crowd into a frenzy and lifting his bat in celebration while the ball was still in the air. Freeman took his time trotting down the first-base line before breaking into an extended celebration as the Yankees looked on in disbelief.
Amidst the chaos, Dodgers play-by-play announcer Joe Davis evoked the memory of Kirk Gibson, who was sidelined with multiple leg injuries before hitting a dramatic pinch-hit, walk-off homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series — Los Angeles’ most recent title in a full season. As Davis predicted, Freeman’s bomb was a sign of things to come.
In the long arc of history, events have a funny way of repeating themselves. Of course, Gibson is not Freeman, and the 1988 Dodgers are not the 2024 Dodgers. Los Angeles still had three more games to win, including a historic Game 5 comeback that warranted a spot on this list in its own right. Nothing is ever guaranteed in baseball, especially not against a quality opponent like the Yankees.
Still, Freeman’s walk-off changed the tenor of the series and became a defining moment in franchise history. Just like Gibson’s home run inspired the 1988 Dodgers to finish the heavily-favored Oakland Athletics off in five games, the 2024 World Series never again looked in doubt.
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