From the presidential election to celebrity deaths, many people can’t wait for 2017.

I’m here to tell you why 2016 was a great year, with some of the best sports stories and championship moments we have ever seen.

Sometimes we can try and romanticize at the end of the year about everything great that happened and it really wasn’t as good as we make it sound.

Well I’m here to tell you that 2016 was better than I could ever make it sound in the sports world, and here’s why.

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One good shot

deserves another

The 2016 NCAA men’s basketball title game saw an all-time great shot by North Carolina’s Marcus Paige, a double-clutch 3-pointer to tie the game against Villanova with 4.7 seconds left in regulation

Kris Jenkins proceeded to one-up Paige’s shot with a buzzer-beater for the national championship. The play was set up by Ryan Arcidiacono, Villanova’s senior leader, dribbling the length of the floor and instead of taking the last shot like everyone though he would, giving it up to the trail man, Jenkins. It was a game and finish for the ages between one of the all-time blue blood programs in college hoops and another that perhaps  is one of the most underappreciated great teams in recent memory.

The Wildcats run to the title included four blowout wins, among those was the biggest margin of victory in Final Four history over Oklahoma, 85-51 in the national semifinals.

Party like it’s 1908

Either way, the 2016 World Series between the Cubs and the Indians was going to produce a team that hadn’t won in a long time. It was ultimately the Cubs that got the job done in Game 7 in extra innings. It was only fitting that a franchise that had to wait 108 years for a championship had to last through an extra-inning rain delay after they blew a 6-1 lead.

This was another historically great championship game.

With an overused and tired Aroldis Chapman called on in the eighth inning to get a 4-out save, it was the light-hitting Rajai Davis that connected for a 3-run bomb to tie the game and send the Cleveland crowd (which included LeBron James, more on him below) into a frenzy, thinking that their team would end its 68-year drought.

It was not to be however, as Ben Zobrist, after the game was delayed due to rain (only adding to the drama) after the ninth inning, doubled in what proved to be the game-winning run in the 10th.

The Year of LeBron

Folks around Cleveland will simply refer to it as ‘The Block.’

Down 3-1 in the NBA Finals to Golden State, the Cavs came roaring back to force a decisive Game 7.

The final moments of that game will be remembered for two things – Kyrie Irving’s stepback 3 and LeBron’s improbable block on Andre Iguodala.

Irving hit was proved to be the game-winner with 53 seconds left, less than a minute after LeBron came up with the defensive play of his career, one that, along with Irving’s shot, will be immortalized in Cleveland. The King raced down from the opposite end of the court to pin Iguodala’s potential go-ahead layup against the back board, which led to Irving’s heroics.

Those two plays brought the city its first championship since the 1964 Cleveland Browns.

In the process, they became just the fourth team in Finals history to win a Game 7 on the road and the first Finals team to come back from a 3-1 deficit.

They did so against the team that finished with the best regular season record in NBA history – 73-9.

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Now come on. Those were not only three of the best championship-deciding games of all time, but also some of the best, most clutch championships moments in history. All three still give me goosebumps.

And they were the icing on what was a delicious 2016 sports cake.

Here’s the best of the rest:

The dominance of swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, as well as gymnast Simone Biles in the 2016 Summer Olympics; Kobe Bryant’s farewell tour; The Penguins run to their third Stanley Cup title; The return of the Raiders; Von Miller’s strip sack in the Super Bowl to help the Broncos win the Super Bowl; Usain Bolt goes 3-for-3 in his Olympic swan song; Bartolo Colon’s first career home run; The return to prominence of traditional college football powers Michigan, Penn State and USC. Neymar’s gold-winning penalty kick for Brazil in the Olympics; Dee Gordon’s home run following the tragic death of teammate and close friend Jose Fernandez; Connor McGregor knocking out Eddie Alvarez.