Top 10 Teams of the 2010s

As the regular readers of this blog know, my final post of the year (or second-to-last if New Year's is on the weekend) is usually a list counting down the best games of the year.  However, with the 2010s coming to an end, I decided to do something a little different this time.  Instead of counting down the best games of 2019, I'm going to encompass the entire decade.  And instead of counting down games, I'm going to count down the best teams.

I'm not talking about the teams that had one magical year during the 2010s.  I'm talking about the teams that had the best 10 years.  I'm talking about the teams that come to mind when you think "Team of the Decade."  Multiple championships, sustained excellence, all the elements that get you defined as a "dynasty."

This list is also being limited to teams in the major North American professional and collegiate sports.  It would be too difficult to narrow it down to just 10 if we were including national teams and European soccer clubs.  Especially since they would dominate the list.  In fact, the U.S. Women's Soccer Team, with two World Cups, an Olympic gold medal, and a World Cup Final appearance, would be right up there at the top.  So would the U.S. Women's Basketball Team, which went undefeated in major international competitions during the 2010s, winning three World Cups and two Olympic gold medals.

So, with that in mind, it's time to end the 2010s by counting down the 10 best teams of the last 10 years...

10. Cleveland Cavailers--1 NBA Championship (2016), 3 NBA Finals appearances (2015, 2017, 2018): They'd probably be higher if they hadn't lost three of their four Finals matchups with the Warriors, getting their butts kicked in the last two.  But still, making it to four straight Finals, regardless of whether you win them or not is an impressive achievement.  And LeBron delivered on his promise when he returned to Cleveland by leading the Cavs to the city's first championship in any sport since 1964.

9. San Francisco Giants--3 World Series Championships (2010, 2012, 2014): Entering the 2010s, the Giants hadn't won the World Series since 1954, when they still played in New York.  They won their first championship since moving to San Francisco in 2010, and ended up winning three in five years to start the decade.  The "Even-Year Giants" were definitely a thing in the early part of the 2010s, as they alternated World Series wins with not even making the playoffs in the odd-numbered years.

8. Chicago Blackhawks--3 Stanley Cup Championships (2010, 2013, 2015): Like the Giants, it had been a long time since the Chicago Blackhawks had won a championship when they finally hoisted the Cup again in 2010.  That was just the start.  Chicago won again in 2013, then captured their third Stanley Cup of the decade two years later.  The Blackhawks and LA Kings actually alternated getting their names on the Stanley Cup from 2012-15, and the Penguins won back-to-back in 2016-17.  But Chicago was the only team with three titles in the decade.

7. Minnesota Lynx--4 WNBA Championships (2011, 2013, 2015, 2017), 2 WNBA Finals appearances (2012, 2016): The WNBA often gets ignored, so it would be easy to overlook Minnesota's dominance throughout the 2010s.  But, in a seven-year period from 2011-17, the Lynx played in six WNBA Finals and won four championships.  The only one they missed was 2014, when they lost to Phoenix in the Western Conference Finals (prompting the WNBA rule change where conferences are now ignored in playoff seeding).  Amazingly, they never won back-to-back, winning the title only in the odd years.  Kinda a reverse San Francisco Giants situation.

6. Notre Dame Women's Basketball--1 NCAA Championship (2018), 5 National Championship Game appearances (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2019), 7 Final Fours: Notre Dame had the unfortunate task of having to face UConn or Baylor seemingly every time they made it to the National Championship Game, which was pretty much every year.  And they played some epic Final Four games, too, including the National Championship Game that they did win on Easter night in 2018 on Arike Ogunbowale's ridiculous three-pointer with 0.1 seconds left.

5. Clemson Football--2 CFP National Championships (2016, 2018), 2 CFP National Championship Game appearances (2015, 2019), 1 CFP appearance (2017): Clemson's 2010s still technically aren't over.  If they beat LSU, they'll be the first team in the playoff era to win three National Championships.  As it is, there's no denying they've been one of the two dominant teams since the playoff was instituted.  After missing the playoff in its first year, they've been in the last five and are in their fourth Championship Game.

4. Alabama Football--4 National Championships (2011, 2012, 2015, 2017), 2 CFP National Championship Game appearances (2016, 2018), 1 CFP appearance (2014): Alabama has four National Championships in the last 10 years--two in the BCS era and two in the CFP era.  This season marked the first time in the CFP's six-year existence that they weren't one of the four teams selected.  There's no question that Clemson and Alabama are head-and-shoulders above the rest over the past decade, but the Crimson Tide are ranked higher because of their two pre-CFP titles and six total Championship Game appearances.

3. UConn Women's Basketball--5 NCAA Championships (2010, 2013-16), 10 Final Fours: UConn was the team of the 90s and team of the 2000s in women's college basketball, so it should come as no surprise that they're also the team of the 10s.  The Huskies went to the Final Four EVERY YEAR of the decade and won five NCAA titles, including four straight with Breana Stewart (2013-16).  They also had an absurd 111-game winning streak that started early in Stewart's sophomore year and wasn't snapped until Mississippi State beat them on an overtime buzzer beater in the 2017 Final Four.

2. New England Patriots--3 Super Bowl Championships (2014, 2016, 2018), 2 Super Bowl appearances (2011, 2017): Bradicheck had a message for all of us who thought they might slow down as they got older.  "We ain't done yet!"  Their streak of division titles extends into the 2000s, and, should they get back to the Super Bowl, they'll be just the second team to make it four years in a row.  As it is, they've played in four of the last five and won three of them, including that epic comeback against the Falcons in Super Bowl LI.  And to think, when they beat the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, it was their first title in 10 years!  They sure made up for it at the end of the decade.

1. Golden State Warriors--3 NBA Championships (2015, 2017, 2018), 2 NBA Finals appearances (2016, 2019): Steph Curry and Co. didn't begin dominating the NBA until midway through the decade, but they've enjoyed one of the greatest five-year runs of any team in any sport ever.  Since 2015, they've had a permanent ticket booked to the NBA Finals (against LeBron the first four times).  They won three titles in four years from 2015-18 and the one year in that span they didn't win (2016), they set a record by going a ridiculous 73-9 in the regular season.  Golden State then went 16-1 in the 2017 postseason, with the only loss coming in Game 4 of the Finals.  Because of their sheer dominance over the past five years, the Warriors get the nod over the Patriots as the overall "Team of the 2010s."