The most intense sports moments of 2016

What do we watch sports for? Well, a good part of it is for the release. The unreal tension that doesn't end until the confetti and tears start to fall. Catharses will always bring us closer to the sports we love.

Good Thursday and welcome back to the Yardbarker where we ask our contributors to discuss the serious (and not so serious) sides of sports. This week we've been going talking about who and what  we loved this year, along with people we think should get a mulligan for 2016.

Today we want to relive that moment of just sheer "oh my, that just happened" craziness that comes with being a sports fan. Not just for the teams we're fans of, but for the instant of seeing something so much bigger than everything else in the moment unfurl. So we asked a few of our contributors:

What was the most intense sports moment of 2016? The moment you will remember for the rest of your life; where you were watching it, if there was a person you turned to in that moment in either shock, joy, defeated, or plain old dumbfounded over what you just witnessed.

Matt Whitener: The final quarter of the NBA Finals was without a doubt one of the most intense moments in sports history. It was the collision of the most undeniable unit in all of basketball versus LeBron James' date with destiny. And LeBron simply put on one of the most undeniable overall efforts in basketball history in the fourth quarter, taking over the game seemingly by himself. It culminated with his massive block on Andre Iguodala and perhaps the greatest near-dunk in history that he almost rammed home on Draymond Green. I bounced around my living room like a wrestling ring watching that and still can't totally believe he did all of that in like, what, a five minute time span? Unreal.

Laura Sabo: The Olympic Games spoiled us this year with many such moments – I personally spent the two weeks bawling in front of my TV. If I had to choose among them all, I would go with watching athletes like Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles own their respective sports. An honorable mention goes to Andre DeGrasse of Canada unexpectedly earning a place on the podium alongside his hero, Usain Bolt, and making the world pay attention and also generate a lot of bromance memes.

Shiloh Carder: Personally for me it was the NCAA Tournament championship game . As a Tar Heel die hard fan, the emotion from Marcus Paige hitting that amazing shot to tie the game for North Carolina (I screamed "Holy" ... uh ... "poop" to my wife) to Kris Jenkins hitting the shot for Villanova to win the championship was the ultimate is swinging emotions (I swear on everything that before the inbounds play, I muttered "they're gonna hit this shot" to her as well).

I sat in complete silence as the confetti fell, as the Wildcats celebrated, as the hats and shirts were being passed out. I sat in silence as the postgame interviews happened and the analysis was being given. I sat in silence as everyone else in my house went to sleep and the network switched to... whatever it was. Losing like that stings.

David Matthews: The Cubs winning the World Series . I watched every World Series game at a rotating set of bars with rotating sets of friends, comprised of both Cubs and Indians fans. It was a really terrific, money-burning week-plus, but Game 7 was the perfect cap to it all. I was a nervous wreck throughout the game, even when things were looking up. I became despondent when Rajai Davis tied the game and thought, "oh, of course." However, my pessimism was abated when Ben Zobrist knocked in the go-ahead run, my physical movements and expression nearly aping Anthony Rizzo's as he stood on third base . Following Kris Bryant's series-clinching throw to first, I yelped briefly before going mute and smiling. It was simultaneously one of the most overwhelming moments of my life as well as one of the happiest. Let's do it again next year.

Hashim Hathaway: Cubs finally winning the World Series . Now we'll pick apart how the team essentially, like so many other franchises, sold their soul in order to finally win, but for a brief moment, we got to see a moment that many people never lived to see, but always hoped for. No matter how we got to that point, we saw history, and then it was muted by Donald Trump. The Cubs still can't win.

For more Yardbarker end of the year roundtables from our contributors:
The bandwagons we jumped on in 2016
Our favorite sports docs and movies of 2016
Athletes who deserve a mulligan for a bad 2016