ESPY Awards 2012: Teams More Deserving of Best Team Award Than Miami Heat

While the ESPY's may be the only award show to honor athletes and teams, I am not prepared to surrender the award for Best Team of the Year to the Miami Heat, who was awkwardly represented by Mike Miller and Juwan Howard on Wednesday night.

The fact that two players who combined to play 18.7 minutes a game accepted the award illustrates that the Heat weren’t a true team. They had LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh…and a bunch of mediocre players. There were multiple teams in the NBA with much better rosters 1-to-12 than the Heat.

Sure they won the championship, but they sleepwalked through the regular season at times, finishing with only the fourth-best record during the regular season.

The Heat was a great story this year, but didn’t deserve team of the year over the following teams.

Kentucky Wildcats

The college basketball world was pummeled by John Calipari’s bunch.

Led by Anthony Davis, the Wildcats destroyed the competition in route to a 38-2 record and a national championship. In their six tournament wins, the average margin of victory was almost 12 points.

They had the top-two players in the NBA Draft, and six overall selected.

There is no doubt they were the best team in the nation from the jump, and their run of dominance won’t be replicated for quite some time with the NBA’s silly one-and-done rule.

Kentucky was the exception.

Baylor Bears

The only perfect team on the list (40-0), there is no doubt they were the most dominant team on this list.

They beat UCLA by 33, Yale by 50, Missouri by 30, Kansas State by 29…shall I go on?

The one issue I have with this team is the lack of balance. Brittney Griner displayed the sort of talent that hasn’t been seen in over a decade in the women’s game. There is no question she is going to be a superstar in the WNBA.

Yet aside from Griner, there wasn’t a ton of other star players. Odyssey Sims and Destiny Williams were decent contributors, but they lacked much depth.

St. Louis Cardinals

While they lose points for having a rather mundane regular season until September, they gain back those points with their postseason performance.

They were down to their final strike in Game 6 of the World Series against the Texas Rangers, only to have David Freese smack a two-run triple to tie the game at seven. In extra innings he one-upped himself by hitting a walk-off home run to ensure a Game 7.

Multiple players played hero in the decisive Game 7, in what was the most exciting postseason in sports this year.

Aside from Freese, they had Albert Pujols in his final season with the Cardinals, Matt Holliday in his prime, a rejuvenated Chris Carpenter and a manager in Tony La Russa who ended up retiring at season's end.

My pick: Kentucky

The Wildcats were extremely consistent, and beat the two teams they lost to. Despite being young and inexperienced, their blend of size, strength, athleticism and shooting combined to create one of the greatest college basketball teams in the last 15 years.

We won’t see a team like this in men’s college basketball for a very long time. 

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