SI’s Favorite Moments of 2023
As Sports Illustrated looks back at 2023, writers reflect on memorable moments across sports:
Basketball
Los Angeles Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hands off to LeBron James after James broke his all-time scoring record on Feb. 7, 2023.
Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports
Chris Mannix, NBA
Rarely do you know you are going to see history but last February, with LeBron James 36 points from the all-time scoring record, you had a feeling something special might be coming. Putting aside the obvious observation that came after James’s 38,388th career point—why didn’t James, a skilled playmaker, dump it to an open Thomas Bryant in the paint?—the next was just how effortlessly James had made it all look. The two points that pushed him past Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were among the 1,954 James totaled last season. He made the All-Star team for the 19th time, same for All-NBA, and averaged 25 points per game or more for the 20th straight season. “We’ll never see anyone like him” is a common sports cliché but watching James elevate over Oklahoma City’s Kenrich Williams it was very clear: We won’t.
Rohan Nadkarni, NBA
Derrick White’s buzzer-beating winning shot in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals was truly one of the most stunning moments in NBA history, in a competitive series between bitter rivals filled with Shyamalan-level twists and turns. The No. 8 seed Miami Heat raced out to a 3-0 lead over the No. 1 seed Boston Celtics. Then Miami lost the next two games, and was on the verge of losing a third straight before Jimmy Butler led a miraculous fourth-quarter comeback, putting the Heat ahead by a point with three seconds left with three free throws. On the decisive play, Boston’s Marcus Smart missed a potential winner, and the crowd went wild! And then immediately White scooped the rebound and layed in the actual winner as time expired, and the crowd went completely silent. In that series, which the Heat won in seven, both fan bases experienced the full range of sports emotions over the course of two weeks. They experienced that full range in those three seconds, too.
Las Vegas Aces star Wilson (22) won the 2023 WNBA Finals MVP award but finished third in regular season MVP voting.
Brian Babineau/NBAE/Getty Images
Michael Rosenberg, WNBA
The record will always show that Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson finished third in WNBA MVP voting this year; the New York Liberty's Breanna Stewart won, and one voter even put Wilson fourth, behind her own teammate, Chelsea Gray. But in this case, the record lies. In Game 4 of the WNBA Finals—on the road, with Gray, Kiah Stokes and Candace Parker all out with injuries—Wilson showed she is the best player in the world. She put up 24 points and grabbed 16 rebounds. Stewart shot 3 for 17. The Aces won the championship. Stewart is a marvelous player, but Wilson is the WNBA's best player—and is building her case as the best ever.
Kevin Sweeney, College Basketball
Fairleigh Dickinson’s upset over Purdue in the NCAA men’s tournament was the ultimate David-over-Goliath moment. I watched it unfold, like most people did, on television, from a cramped media room in Albany, N.Y., while covering a different Big Dance site. The slow realization that a seemingly-impossible upset was happening is a feeling unique to March Madness. And this one topped them all, with FDU the shortest team in Division I taking on the colossal Boilermakers. Knights coach Tobin Anderson calling his shot beforehand only added to this legendary upset. The game served as yet another reminder that, even with all the changes making things harder for smaller schools to compete in college sports, anything is possible in single-elimination basketball.
Football
Gilberto Manzano, NFL
Chatting with quarterbacks Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud at the NFLPA Rookie Premiere in L.A. a week after the childhood friends from Southern California were selected No. 1 and 2, respectively, in the NFL draft. I asked Stroud about the criticism he received leading up to the draft, and it was easy to see then how determined he was to prove the doubters wrong. He’s now one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL and the front-runner for Offensive Rookie of the Year. Young was more reserved, but seeing the respect he has from Stroud said plenty. It hasn’t gone his way during Year 1 with the Carolina Panthers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a better second season. Interviewing both quarterbacks at the same time is certainly up there for favorite interview of the past few years.
Conor Orr, NFL
I was lucky enough to get to profile Bryce Young for our 2023 draft preview and got to spend the better part of two days with Young and his parents at the end of February. At the time, just after the Super Bowl, I was really missing my kids, since travel for the playoffs, Super Bowl and now the draft was sending me all over the country. But as I stood on a football field with Bryce's mom, Julie, listening to her talk about a pair of sneakers her son had bought for her, Bryce walked over, looked at her like every bit the young man he still was, and asked if she could hold his keys, phone and chapstick. My kids are 5 and 3, and sometimes I joke that I am just a talking shelf or cupboard meant for housing everything they don't want to hold onto. And I got this immense relief in knowing that, maybe even when my kids are in their 20s, I'll get to do that still. It formed the inspiration for probably my favorite sentence that I've ever written at the magazine, that was just as much about my own kids, my own parents and my own hopes for the kind of dad I want to be, as it was a recognition of my experiences with Bryce's parents (who are adorable, by the way).
Matt Verderame, NFL
Watching the Kansas City Chiefs react to each other after the Super Bowl. I was underneath the stadium that night, watching some of their biggest stars sitting at the podium before the pressers started. They were exhausted but elated, with the players who had been there for both titles acknowledging each other with "two times." It was a special moment for special athletes.
Jennifer Piacenti, Fantasy Sports
- Joe Flacco returns to the NFL in spectacular fashion, and the Cleveland Browns, despite losing Nick Chubb and three starting quarterbacks, look like a winning team, restoring hope for their long-suffering fan base.
- C.J. Stroud and the Houston Texans go from zero to hero under the leadership of DeMeco Ryans, easily exceeding their win total in Vegas, and winning back the hearts of disappointed fans.
Baseball
Tom Verducci, MLB
Like an art museum, orchestra or woodland trail, baseball is best when it becomes a repository of pure appreciation, not simply a binary outcome exercise. So it was on the greatest night of the 2023 season, when even the person charged with being the most dispassionate swooned over the fortuitous beauty of a moment.
Lance Barksdale, the home plate umpire for the World Baseball Classic final March 21, was dressed in a sport jacket and open collar shirt upon leaving the umpires’ dressing room at loanDepot Park in Miami when I stopped him in a hallway. We were alone. Barksdale, who had just turned 55, had umpired 30 years in pro ball. He had worked on crews for three no-hitters, two All-Star Games and two World Series.
This moment, however, was a tableau vivant like nothing before it: Shohei Ohtani, his uniform pants covered in dirt from his work as a DH for Team Japan, pitching to Team USA outfielder and then Los Angeles Angels teammate Mike Trout. Bottom of the ninth. One-run game. Two outs. Full count. Ohtani won the battle. He threw the best sweeper of his life. Trout swung and missed. The result mattered less than the moment. I felt compelled to ask Barksdale about it. He had to bear the utmost concentration, given the stakes and how Ohtani was firing 101 mph fastballs and sweepers with nearly three feet of vertical break. And yet, I needed to know, could even Barksdale figuratively step back and appreciate the moment?
“Of course,” he said. “These are the times when you feel blessed just to be a part of it. I did recognize the moment. It was just a blessing.” I nodded in shared appreciation, just as Ohtani and Trout had nodded at one another before their epic confrontation. Baseball at its best.
Emma Baccellieri, MLB
Shohei Ohtani striking out Mike Trout to win the World Baseball Classic. This was the scenario people had been discussing since the start of the tournament—the chance to see two generationally great teammates going up against one another. That it happened at all was a treat. But that it happened like this? In a one-run game, bottom of the ninth, two strikes, Ohtani making a surprise appearance out of the bullpen to close out a championship, Trout representing the last hope for Team USA? If this had been scripted, it would have seemed like too much. But it delivered. Ohtani mixed his lethal sweeper with a series of triple-digit heaters; Trout nevertheless worked him to a full count. It came down to the last strike. If you’d previously thought the WBC was silly, or that it was pointless to hold an international tournament in the spring, it would have been impossible to argue in the glorious, tense moment before that final pitch. This mattered. And by the time Ohtani delivered one last sweeper to strike out Trout, it was undeniable: This was one of the best baseball moments of the year.
Michael Fabiano, Fantasy Sports
I'm a die-hard New York Yankees fan, so 2023 was a bad one. But there was one personal memory that is very dear to me involving the Bronx Bombers. I moved to Florida this past summer and the Yankees just happened to be playing at the Miami Marlins the weekend of my 50th birthday. I was able to get tickets for the game, and I took my 81-year father, Ralph, and my 82-year old aunt, Donna. The Fabianos are huge Yankees fans dating back several generations, but my aunt had never been to a professional baseball game! My grandfather (my dad and aunt's father who passed away years ago) was also a huge Yankees fan, and I felt like he was there with us. My aunt got a foul ball, Aaron Judge hit a home run, and the Yankees won, too. It's a day and experience I will never forget.
College Sports
My favorite story of 2023 was finding out that North Carolina had hired a 22-year-old coach to lead its juggernaut field hockey program—one who had just finished a superstar playing career at the school. I happened to be in Chapel Hill for a men's basketball story just days after the hire was made and decided to work in a story on this prodigy, Erin Matson. I know nothing about field hockey but was blown away meeting her—if anyone is a justifiable college head coach hire within weeks of graduation, she was it. This was the story I wrote on her, which got a pretty extraordinary amount of traction.
Still, there was no guarantee she could handle the coaching gig. UNC lost its second match of the year, to Iowa, which instilled a little doubt. But lo and behold, the Tar Heels earned the No. 1 NCAA tournament seed and won the title. Now Erin Matson has five nattys: four as a player, one as a coach.
Matson will be the commencement speaker for the UNC Hussman school of Journalism and Media in May. She just graduated from the school in 2022.
Boxing
Greg Bishop, Senior Writer
I started covering boxing in 2008 and have been fortunate enough to witness roughly 50 cards in person in many states and countries. All of which is to say: I've never seen a performance quite like the show Terence Crawford put on in front of a packed arena in Las Vegas in late July. This wasn't typical boxing sleight of hand. His clash with Errol Spence Jr. was the fight that fans most wanted to see. I expected it would be close, and I predicted Spence would win by decision. Spence did not win by decision. And it was not close.
Crawford put on an all-time performance. He weathered Round 1, then set about battering Spence from both stances, with both hands. He knocked Spence down. Then knocked him down again. Then once more, for good measure. His TKO in Round 9 doesn't capture how special he was that night, how he recalled welterweights from the 1980s, from that division's heyday, and how anyone who saw that and wasn't transfixed might want to check for a pulse. It marked the best moment of 2023 in sports for me—by a mile.
Sports Media
Jimmy Traina, Traina Thoughts
My favorite memory from the world of sports media in 2023 came on Sept. 20, when radio legend, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, left his First Take co-hosts in disbelief and ESPN’s viewers in hysterics when he described his weekend plans of drinking, taking gummies and calling in bets to his friend, Fat Rob.
“I’ll get a run in. I’ll take the two dogs, Bo and Riley for a walk. At about 12 o’clock I’ll sit down, I’ll make an early cocktail, I’ll cut a gummy in half. We got Florida St.-Clemson. I like the Florida State quarterback. I’ll do something there. At about 3:25, when I’m sauced … I’ll put the call in to Fat Rob … Rob, put 10 dimes on Colorado and Deion. So by 3:25, I’ll be sitting down with my shorts, T-shirt, cocktail and I’ll have the other half of gummy.
Russo’s itinerary was a home run with many viewers because they, too, were going to participate in some of, if not all of, those very same activities over the weekend. But to hear such talk on a Disney-owned property was completely unexpected and somewhat shocking.
If you don’t believe me just watch Marcus Spears’s face throughout Russo’s explanation of his Saturday festivities. Spears’s performance was just as good as Russo’s throughout this entire segment.
Golf
The first tee at Marco Simone Golf Club in Rome on the first morning of the Ryder Cup. Thousands of spectators waited in darkness for the gates to open at 6:30 a.m., with the first ball not to be launched into the air for another hour. The 5,000-seat Colosseum-like arena was filled more than 30 minutes before the first players were to start the event.
[ SI's Top Golf Stories of 2023: LIV Golf vs. the PGA, Tiger Woods and More ]
There’s been a lot of negativity in golf lately, but the vibe on the first tee of a Ryder Cup is special. Players talk about it being the most nervous they ever are beginning any golf tournament, including major championships. It’s tense, yet also upbeat. The Americans appeared nervous, and it proved to be a tough environment as they lost each of the first four matches on the way to a resounding European victory.
I was on my first of two five-week stints in Europe, covering the LIV London event at the Centurion Club outside of London. It had been a year since LIV had started at the Centurion Club and like with everything else, the new tour was experiencing growing pains. On a lark, I decided to approach Matthew Wolff as he came off the 18th hole and ask him about a rumored squabble with team captain Brooks Koepka. Wolff was cooperative to start but eventually became agitated and walked off to the locker room, where media is not allowed. After digesting Wolff’s limited comments, I decided to approach Koepka on the range. It was late in the day and Koepka was just finishing. As he started to walk off, I approached him and asked about Wolff. It was like a light went on and the five-time major winner went off on Wolff and I didn’t need to ask another question.
It was a feast and Koepka was the chef. The next day, the story was everywhere, and Wolff’s agent contacted us and said he would provide a statement to us and only us, providing another day of exclusive reporting. It was a great way to start the trip.
Tennis
Gauff won her first major, the U.S. Open, in 2023.
Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated
At Wimbledon 2023, Coco Gauff lost in the first round, and the voices of doubt —both external and internal—were amplified. Why, at the wizened age of 19, was she underachieving and failing to fulfill all that promise? Could she ever win with that janky forehand? And was she perhaps just another overhyped player from the U.S., a tennis market desperate to mint new stars? At an age when she could have been spending a carefree summer lifeguarding or taking classes toward her major, Gauff showed both precocious poise and the pliability of the adolescent that she is. She reshuffled her coaching ranks (including changing the roles of her parents), made a few technical adjustments, allowed her confidence to swell and … suddenly was back to winning. By mid-September, she was the U.S. Open champion, winning her first Major title, breaking through and reminding us all that athletes often know themselves better than we know them.
After freezing up at the French Open, 20-year-old Carlos Alcaraz rallies to beat Novak Djokovic, arguably the greatest tennis player of all time, at Wimbledon. The feat was all the more impressive as Alcarez had never won a title on grass. The future of men’s tennis looks alive and well, and a new rivalry has been born.
Wrestling
Fans of professional wrestling love to think they know where a story line is going. When Cody Rhodes, the son of the legendary Dusty Rhodes, left the wrestling company he helped found (AEW) and returned to WWE in early 2022, he told fans he had come back to accomplish what his father had never done: win the WWE championship. His title match against Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39 a year later was a chance to “finish the story,” as Rhodes had said repeatedly. It made perfect sense for Reigns, who was nearing 1,000 days as champion, to drop the belt to Rhodes in what would be a feel-good moment to close the two-night event in Los Angeles.
But that’s not what fans got. Instead, Reigns’s cousin, Solo Sikoa, took advantage of the referee being distracted (classic wrestling hijinks) and hit Rhodes with a cheap shot, allowing Reigns to pin him and retain the title. Everyone in the sold-out SoFi Stadium was shocked. Many were angry, but to me, it was a reminder that—just like in non-scripted sports—there’s nothing better than a good twist ending.
Michael Fabiano, Fantasy Sports
I'm a fan of WWE, and Seth Rollins is a good friend of mine. To see him win the World Heavyweight Championship at Night of Champions was very memorable, not only because we're friends but also because no one deserved it more. I'm proud to call him a friend, and I'm proud to see the crowd's reaction to him every time he steps into the squared circle
Hockey
Vegas Golden Knights winning their first Stanley Cup, and the first major championship in the city (followed quickly by the Aces). It also continued to cement that hockey can thrive in warm-weather, non-traditional areas.
