25 biggest sports turkeys of 2016 for this Thanksgiving

The choke job that launched a thousand memes. The Oklahoma City Thunder crumbled when up 3-1 in the Western Conference Final against Golden State, but they didn’t have the best regular season ever. Instead of being considered the greatest team of all time and winning back to back titles, the Warriors now have to live with being one of the ultimate “yeah, but” teams.

Cleveland Indians

This could have been a lot worse for the city of Cleveland had the Cavaliers not won the NBA Championship earlier in the year. Still, a 3-1 lead is a 3-1 lead and championship teams never fail to close out in those situations. The Indians could’ve been the ones etched into history as continuing the Chicago Cubs’ century-long streak of futility, instead they will be forever known as the team that ended the Cubs’ championship drought.

Cleveland Browns

To be honest, the Cleveland Browns could be on this list every year, but this year has been particularly rough. They are winless through ten games and it appears that they be the second 0-16 in the league history. They’ve gone through three starting quarterbacks giving them 26 since 1999. Don’t expect things to turn around anytime soon either, Cleveland fans. This special kind of terrible doesn’t seem like it’s going to end anytime soon.

Oklahoma City Thunder

This may have been the beginning of the end for the Thunder as their fans knew them. All they had to do was win one more game against the defending champions to reach the NBA Finals for the second time in franchise history in Oklahoma City. Not only did they lose three straight to lose the series, they lost superstar Kevin Durant to the very team that knocked them out of the playoffs. Talk about salt in the wound.

Fans who think athletes shouldn’t be socially conscious

The only thing more played than people saying athletes should stay in their lane, play the game and shut up is the dab. Fans love to criticize players for being dumb jocks, but as soon as someone has an opinion about anything, they are told to shut their mouths. What the do you want, people? Yes, sports is way for many people to escape from harsh realities, but if an athlete takes a stand for something they believe in, what does it say about you that you want them to remain uninformed?

Mike Evans

That being said, Tampa Bay wide receiver Mike Evans’ political statement wasn’t well thought out. Evans sat to protest the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, but he didn’t vote in the election. I’m all for sitting, standing or taking a knee to express discontent, but if you fail to participate in a process that could have changed that situation, it undercuts any statement you are trying to make. Hopefully, he will take part in voting next time around.

Ryan Lochte

Rio was not kind to Ryan Lochte, but then again, the USA swimmer wasn’t too nice to Rio either. He and a couple of Team USA swimmers went out one night and painted the town red, white and blue in a bad way. Public urination wouldn’t have been that bad because there’s nothing with being young and intoxicated, but the subsequent cover up where he lied about being held up at gunpoint and robbed was. But when he got caught, he not only embarrassed himself, but an entire nation in the biggest international competition.

Jose Bautista

This is the only player on the list included solely for his play because the drop off was so significant this year. Last season, Blue Jays outfielder Joey Bats had 40 home runs and 114 RBI on a team that would make a deep playoff run. This year, Bautista dropped to 22 home runs and 69 RBI. He may be showing his age, but Bautista’s power outage in the regular and postseason will greatly affect his value going into free agency this year. He may have lost millions.

Draymond Green

Heck of a year for Warriors forward Draymond Green in the 2015-2016 season. He was arguably the most valuable player on the best regular season team ever, won a gold medal and showed his junk to the whole world. In between there, he also attained a reputation for attacking the nether region of other players. One can only hope that Green is just as entertaining the following year. Well, fans at least. Players, not so much.

Baylor

No jokes here. The way Baylor handled sexual assault allegations relating to its football team was at best irresponsible and at worst consciously negligent. Universities are tasked with protecting the young adults that pay gobs of money to attend its institution. Baylor’s failure to do that was disheartening.

Hope Solo

Unless you’re President-elect Donald Trump, it’s pretty difficult to anger multiple countries. USWNT goalie Hope Solo somehow found a way to do it as well. First, she started with an Instagram post showing the amount of mosquito protection she was bringing to Rio, resulting in a “Zika” taunt every time she touched the ball during the Olympics from Brazilian hecklers. Next, she called the Swedish national team “cowards” for their totally legitimate tactics in their win against the US Women’s National Team. Instead of sounding like she was protecting her team, it just came off as sour grapes and resulted in a six-month suspension from USA soccer.

Russian doping scandal

Technically, this may have been going on for years but the Russian Olympic team was taken to the shed in Rio, more than 118 athletes were banned from competing in the Olympics. A government-sanctioned doping program almost caused the entire team to be banned, but Olympic committee was more lenient. Still, Russian athletes were booed and scrutinized the entire competition. It’ll be a while before they return to good standing in the international community.

2016 Rio Olympics

Even without the Russian scandal, the 2016 Rio Games were still dirty. Literally. When the games started, Guanabara Bay was still filled with trash and harbored bacteria that could cause illness to athletes that were exposed to the water. The athletes’ village was barely completed in time and still had problems with plumbing. Even after the games started, pool water turned green. Not only that, multiple athletes and coaches were robbed. Rio could’ve been worse and relatively speaking it went well, but that doesn’t excuse the absence of basic needs like clean water and safety.

Egyptian judoka

The Olympics are supposed to be purely about athletic competition between countries without political entanglements. But nobody told Egyptian judoka Islam El Shehaby. After losing his match with Israeli Or Sasson, El Shehaby refused to shake Sasson’s hand. El Shehaby felt it unnecessary to shake the hand of the Israeli judoka because of the political history of both nations. Instead, the IOC kicked him out of the Olympics because his statement did not represent the spirit of the spirit of friendship embodied in the Olympic values. Is it really too much to ask to show a little sportsmanship on the international stage?

Mongolian strip show

There’s refusing to show sportsmanship and then there is completely stomping on the whole notion. Kind of like what Mongolian wrestling coaches did during the men’s 65kg freestyle bronze medal match. Mongolia’s Ganzorigiin Mandakhnaran had the match in hand against Uzbekistan’s Ikhtiyor Navruzov, 7-6. Mandakhnaran celebrated early, but was called for fleeing the hold and a penalty was awarded to Navruzov. In the tiebreak at 7-7, the win goes to the last person who scores, giving Navruzov the medal instead of Mandakhnaran. The Mongolian coaches obviously didn’t take it too well.

Don Mattingly vs. facial hair

The Miami Marlins were 71-91 in 2015 when new manager Don Mattingly took over in 2016. While some teams like to use free agency or trades to improve their team, Mattingly took a more unorthodox approach by banning facial hair from the clubhouse. The thought behind it was more uniformity, but instead it felt like a manager instituting a dumb rule to assert power. If a dude wants to rock a Fu Manchu, who is Mattingly to prevent the world from experiencing that poor choice? Oh, the Marlins improved but still ended the season with a losing record.

North Carolina legislature

Oh, y’all thought you were just going to discriminate against LBGTQ folk and have no repercussions? No matter how you feel about this law forcing people to use restrooms based on their gender of birth, there is no argument that the real loser are sports fans in North Carolina. Not only did they have they lose the 2017 NBA All-Star Game, the state lost the hosting rights for seven tournaments and championships. Hope it was worth it.

Curt Schilling

Schilling has become the poster boy for never meeting your heroes, except he did it with a national audience. The World Series Champion went from bloody sock hero to unemployed after sharing a meme on Facebook widely considered anti-trans folk. This coming almost a year after posting a meme comparing Muslims to Nazis, but nah, he’s the victim obviously.

Deflategate

The U.S. District Court actually took a look at this. Think about it. Our federal government actually looked at a case that dealt with a guy deflating a ball. To quote the great Allen Iverson, “how silly is that, man?” Deflategate went shrug-worth to a four-game suspension really quick for something that is so benign that pretty much everyone except the NFL gave a hug eye-roll anytime it was mentioned. And now the No Fun League actually wonders why its ratings are dropping. Maybe you ease off on a four-game suspension for a guy who supposedly deflated balls and give, you know, those domestic abusers in your league some of that treatment. Just a suggestion.

Barcelona ball boy

Listen, I really feel bad for the kid. But come on man.

Milwaukee financial scam

We all know at least one less-than-tech-savvy person in our office that needs to be constantly reminded that they should not respond emails from a Nigerian Prince looking to offload some of his uncle’s fortune. This person just happened to work for the Milwaukee Bucks. Someone in the organization handed out W-2 information to a scammer. The FBI and IRS were notified, but maybe someone needs to update their spam blocker.

Larry Fedora

Maybe if your last name is “Fedora,” you should really check yourself before telling a woman reporter that she doesn’t realize something because she’s a woman. That’s what North Carolina head coach told Brooke Pryor during ACC media days. To his credit, Fedora did apologize.

Chris Sale

People around baseball say that Chris Sale is pretty intense. Like, cut up jerseys with a knife intense. Apparently, because Sale felt like the team valued money over winning when he couldn’t choose the jersey he was going to wear that day. Which is fair considering that was the custom, pitchers are superstitious beings and the jerseys looked like this.

But to take knife to everyone’s throwback jersey because you don’t like them? Remind me to never hit up a mall with Sale.

Elliote Friedman

CBC announcer Elliote Friedman must be a HUGE Ryan Lochte fan. Even though it was obvious that Phelps was dominating the field in the 200-meter individual medley, Friedman confused Lochte for Phelps, screaming that he was about to eclipse his rival. Only Phelps won his 22nd Gold Medal, Lochte finished in fifth and Friedman had egg all over his face.

Youth coach sends adult in child’s game

This youth coach was probably the dude in your flag football league that tackled people instead of grabbing flags, and chalks it up to “winning by any means.” Who sends out a man onto a field with 8th grade boys to play football? The rest of the season was canceled for that team and coach was fired for this idiotic decision.