Based on the choices of Sport360 writers, we’ve whittled down 2016’s best to a six-team shortlist.
In contention this year are: Chicago Cubs, All Blacks, Leicester City, Cleveland Cavaliers, Portugal and Real Madrid.
You can VOTE BELOW for your winner, and in the coming days also vote in other international and regional categories. It is an all-out celebration of the great and the good of the sporting world over the past 12 months and the outcome is IN YOUR HANDS!
Have your say on our nominees by using #360awards on Twitter and remind yourselves of our 2015 award winners here.
On Friday, we’ll unveil our regional selections in the men, women and team categories and then provide updates until voting closes at midnight on December 26.
CHICAGO CUBS
No sport does history quite like baseball and the Chicago Cubs held their unique own place in MLB lore, but for the wrong reasons. The ‘Curse of the Billy Goat’ hung over the team as they had failed to win a World Series
since William Sianis and pet goat Murphy were kicked out of Wrigley Field in 1945.
Their last championship dated back even further, to 1908, and with each year the pressure grew. But in 2015-16 they were the best team in baseball, winning 103 games in the regular season and then miraculously winning Games 6 and 7 on the road to trump the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, which put baseball back on the map.
ALL BLACKS
Under former coach Graham Henry, New Zealand were always greeted with the sign, “We are the most dominant team in the history of the world” whenever they set foot in the dressing room.
In 2016, it was difficult to argue with that mantra and the best team in rugby union got even better, claiming a world record run of 18 wins and, bar Ireland in Chicago, made the rest of the planet’s teams look decidedly second-tier.
What was perhaps most remarkable about their consistency – achieved with also playing the most visually-pleasing rugby in the world – was it was done in the wake of the retirement of a third of their team, including two of the greatest in history in Richie McCaw and Dan Carter. More times than not in 2016, the All Blacks were playing a different sport.
LEICESTER CITY
Money dictates so much about football in the modern age; the teams which spend the most, tend to win the most. It doesn’t take an analytics professor to work that particular formula out. Therefore in the richest league in the world, to usurp the elite, you need to spend the GDP of a small country to become the best… well, not if you’re Leicester City.
With a transfer and wage budget among the smallest of all the league’s 20 teams, Leicester City beat odds of 5,000-1 to become champions. How it happened is still a forum for debate, such was the impact, shock and departure from the status quo.
Under a new manager – which can often get overlooked – in Claudio Ranieri, who was much derided in England following a supposed failed stint at Chelsea 12 years earlier, the Foxes played a fast-paced, counter-attacking, exciting style that nobody could really live with.
Ranieri’s paper-thin squad held together over the course of the season and, in the end, they won it comfortably as closest rivals Tottenham fell away, Leicester only losing three games all season. Truly, a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
CLEVELAND CAVALIERS
This was supposed to be the year of the Golden State Warriors. No team had ever gone beyond 69 regular season wins and not won a title. The Warriors went even further than that with an era-defining 73, battled their way through the playoffs and then hit the freight train that was the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Nobody had given the Cavs much of a prayer at the start of the season, even less when it came to the Finals.
They were backed to get a win, maybe two, but the Warriors were just too good. At 3-1 down in the series, the ‘G’ was being inscribed on the Larry O’Brien Trophy but the tide turned with the greatest comeback in Finals history to win in seven and claim a first major sports championship for the city of Cleveland since 1964.
PORTUGAL
Let’s not try and sugar-coat it, Euro 2016 was a bit of a stinker. Okay, there was Iceland and Wales and a handful of good games but in the main it was one of the least memorable international tournaments since… well, probably World Cup 2010.
That being said, in a tournament of so many below-par teams, one of the giants of Europe like Germany, France or Spain would be there to sweep up.
But that’s not how it panned out as Portugal, who like Iceland and Wales but with added star power, played with a unity and spirit of a club side to beat France in the final and lift the first trophy in the country’s rich history.
REAL MADRID
Madrid have some of the best players in the world so, by default, are going to pick up a trophy or two on the way. But it’s easy to forget that Zinedine Zidane was a first-time coach at this level and inherited a badly demotivated dressing room in January with a desperately imbalanced squad to choose from, and not much time to turn it around. It’s to the Frenchman’s enormous credit, therefore, they managed to create some cohesion as Los Blancos made their way to the Champions League final in Milan to overcome city rivals Atletico in a penalty shootout and win an 11th European crown.
