The Best Game ESPY Award is an annual award honoring the achievements of a team who has performed the best play in the world of sports. It was first awarded as part of the

ESPY Awards An ESPY Award (short for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award) is an accolade currently presented by the American broadcast television network ABC, and previously ESPN (as of the 2017 ESPY Awards the latter still airs them in the form ...

in 2002. The Best Game ESPY Award trophy, designed by sculptor

Lawrence Nowlan Lawrence Joseph Nowlan Jr. (January 11, 1965 – July 30, 2013) was an American sculptor and figurative artist known for his statues of notable individuals, including Harry Kalas and Jackie Gleason. Nowlan also designed memorials, including the f ...

, is awarded to the team on the single

regular season In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session: for example, in Major League Baseball the season lasts approximately from the last week of March to the last week of ...

playoff The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...

game contested

professionally A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...

under the auspices of one of the four major North American leagues or collegiately under the auspices of the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...

adjudged, in view of its quality, competitiveness, excitement, and significance, to be the best. Since 2004, the winner has been chosen by online voting through choices selected by the ESPN Select Nominating Committee. Before that, determination of the winners was made by an panel of experts. Through the 2001 iteration of the ESPY Awards, ceremonies were conducted in February of each year to honor achievements over the previous calendar year; awards presented thereafter are conferred in July and reflect performance from the June previous. The inaugural winner of the Best Game ESPY Award in 2002 was the seventh game of the 2001 World Series which decided that year's baseball title in favour of the expansion team

Arizona Diamondbacks The Arizona Diamondbacks (colloquially known as the D-backs) are an American professional baseball team based in Phoenix. The Diamondbacks compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. The ...

over the

New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one of ...

. The following year's recipient of the accolade went to Ohio State University Buckeyes in their

2003 Fiesta Bowl The 2003 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl was a college football bowl game that was the designated Bowl Championship Series (BCS) National Championship Game for the 2002 NCAA Division I-A football season, taking place on January 3, 2003 at Sun Devil Stadiu ...

victory over the University of Miami Hurricanes. College football games have won the award three times and earned another two nominations after

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

which has the most wins of any other sport with eight awards and six nominations while

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

and

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice h ...

games each have one victory each. The 2018 winner of the Best Game ESPY Award is the 2018 Winter Olympics women's ice hockey gold medal game in which the United States team won against Canada's squad in a 3–2 shootout victory to claim their first gold medal in women's ice hockey since the 1998 Winter Games. The award wasn't awarded in

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in t ...

due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, and in

2023 Events Predicted and scheduled events * January 1 ** In the United States, books, films, and other works published in 1927 will enter the public domain, assuming there are no changes made to copyright law. ** Croatia will adopt the eu ...

Winners and nominees

See also

Notes and references

Notes

References

External links