The snow-soaked streets of Hamilton, Ontario are miserable enough this time of year, colder still without the luxury of a consistent address to call home. Sadly, life on the streets – or the looming threat thereof – is a distinct reality for far too many. One organization, the local branch of Street Soccer Canada, has joined the fight, using the power of sport to heal a community.

Great teams are made up of great players. 2011 saw many of them rise up to the challenge and give us memories that will last a lifetime. Whether that greatness was due to a stat sheet or in incredible story, TheGP’s top writers and editors believe that these athletes deserve to be honored as the best of the year.

This past year gave us dozens of memorable memories as the best teams across all sports put together phenomenal seasons. A collection of TheGP’s top writers and editors took a hard look at the best sports teams of 2011 and weigh in with why each of them are deserving to be named the greatest of the year.

The Good Point’s Jesse Goldberg-Strassler is no fool when it comes to sports, or Twitter. He’s prepared a primer of the Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to building your brand in the Sports Twitter-verse, and like everything on Twitter, it’s free!

“Lysistrata Jones” is a Broadway play that combines unsuccessful basketball with Greek comedy. The woes of decades worth of losses forces one player to come up with an unconventional way to turn fortunes around, and The Good Point’s Mark Milner breaks down the play.

On April 12, 1980, Terrance Stanley Fox filled two bottles with ocean water from the Atlantic and headed west from St. John’s, Newfoundland. And so began his marathon. This, however, was no ordinary marathon. This was something far more special. This, was a Marathon of Hope. While an ordinary marathon runs a distance of 42.2 [...]

Over the past weekend, Shaun White and Travis Pastrana were busy adding to their own legends at the 17th annual X-Games in Los Angeles, California. The popularity of the X-Games has grown steadily since they began in 1995. Sponsorship for and attention towards the ESPN-owned mega-event has skyrocketed, throwing once-called “extreme” sports into the mainstream [...]

Almost four years ago, Novak Djokovic began his ascent to the zenith of the men’s tour in earnest, in a few short days climbing over each player above him in the rankings like rungs on a ladder. Showing the magnificent force and dominance of a future No. 1 player, he beat the world’s top three [...]

At the end of May on the final day of the 2010-11 season, Blackpool FC traveled to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United. The game meant nothing to United, who had clinched the Premier League title a week earlier. The game meant everything to Blackpool, one of five teams trying to stave off relegation [...]

A major global sporting event begins this Saturday in South Asia. Co-hosted by India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the 2011 Cricket World will captivate millions of people across five continents for the next six weeks. Historically, Canada versus the United States is the oldest fixture in international cricket. The first match between two opposing countries took [...]

Are professional sports taking away players’ rights when it comes to sexuality? In the fall of 2010, the United States military went from, “don’t ask, don’t tell” to “be gay, it’s okay.” It refers, of course, to a soldier’s sexual orientation. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, and Pope Benedict himself have denounced homosexuality. [...]

If you want to write for Bleacher Report these days, you have to apply to get in. The internet’s most infamous sports writing website, the one that was supposed to liberate sports media and turn the opinion pages to the fans, now requires an application. It’s not going to save the site’s reputation, but it’s [...]

The year 2010 was a memorable one in professional and amateur sports; a constant flow of emotion and excitement. Whether it was the Saints bringing joy back to New Orleans with their Super Bowl victory, Sidney Crosby scoring the golden goal in Vancouver or Spain capturing their first World Cup, fans were captivated throughout the [...]

T’was the year 2010 and from Jan to December; Each month in sports was one to remember. In college football it was Texas, the Crimson Pride would destroy; But the Longhorns were hurting without star McCoy. The Winter Classic saw Flyers/Bruins, a rivalry confirmed; The Bruins got the winner in overtime from Sturm. At the [...]

Every sports video gamer has experienced it at least once over the years. That one time they took their favorite team and turned it into more of an all-century franchise than a realistic salary cap-abiding club. Whether through forced trades, neglected budgets, disabled salary caps, or the ol’ trade-11-draft-picks-for-Albert-Pujols tactic (Thanks, MVP Baseball 2005), cheating [...]

In the year 2010, all it takes is the push of a button to receive up-to-the-minute updates from the vicariously covered sports world. This is due in large part to the millions of dollars devoted annually by technology companies such as Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) to consistently advance their products through software engineering. [...]

Back in March of this year, if one were to research Olympic gold medallist Jon Montgomery on Wikipedia, they may have been surprised to find that the skeleton racer’s profile opened with “Jon Montgomery is totally awesome in every way.” It may be the case that the Russell, Manitoba native is “awesome in every way” [...]

From 2007-2008, sports fans and media folk in the metropolis area of Boston, Massachusetts were riding a consistent feeling of ecstasy. No, they hadn’t gone to a pill-popping high school rave; rather they were treated to a plateful of incredible professional sports clubs in their own backyard. In those two fateful calendar years, the Red [...]

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, just barely out of reach you are. This seems to be the new anthem of the German national soccer team, as they are finding it ever so difficult to find that elusive fourth World Cup star – a pinnacle which has eluded them for two dreadfully long decades. The German squad [...]

On June 4, 2010, the 19th FIFA World Cup commenced in South Africa, where 32 of the world’s best soccer countries came together to do battle for the sport’s ultimate prize. Eight groups, containing four nations apiece, shaped the round-robin play. Here, teams have been competing for the past two-and-half weeks in an attempt to [...]