10 Sports Writers Share Who They Think Was the Best Athlete in 2024

There were many great athletes in 2024 throughout dozens of sports, but who do these 10 writers think takes the cake as the best?

Thank you to Steve, David, Matt, Aaron, Jacob, Noah, Michael, Jarrett, and Stefano for collaborating with me on this post!

Jack Zucker - Jack’s Thoughts

There were three athletes who could’ve easily been named the best of 2024: Vini Jr. of Real Madrid, Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever, and Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Each had a season that was nothing short of extraordinary. Vini Jr. finished second in the Ballon d’Or race (he was my pick to win), leading a team that captured its 15th UEFA Champions League trophy and helped “Los Blancos” secure their 35th La Liga title. Caitlin Clark continued to dominate women’s basketball, finishing a legendary college career, and having an incredible rookie season in the WNBA. But for me, Shohei Ohtani’s 2024 stands alone. While he couldn’t pitch due to Tommy John surgery, his performance at the plate was nothing short of amazing.

Ohtani’s 2024 embodies strength and resilience. Coming off Tommy John surgery, many didn’t expected him to perform at such a high level. However, Ohtani crushed baseballs and stole bases, showcasing power and athleticism that had pitchers scared before they even threw the pitch. His unique advantage? As a pitcher himself, he understands hitters' mindsets, which only helped him smash more home runs.

What’s even more crazy is that Ohtani played through a dislocated shoulder in the Dodgers’ World Series run. After injuring it in game 2, he was supposed to be shut down for the season. Ohtani played through the dislocated shoulder and led Los Angeles to their 8th World Series title in franchise history. That kind of toughness is a big reason why he’s my pick for the best athlete of 2024.

From becoming the first player in MLB history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season, to winning the National League MVP award, Ohtani gave us one of the best seasons any athlete has ever had.

Vini Jr. and Caitlin Clark had incredible seasons, no doubt, but Ohtani wasn’t just playing baseball—he was changing the sport’s history. He broke many, many records, and this year, he not only proved he was the best athlete of 2024, but he also earned a place in the MLB’s G.O.A.T debate.

Steve Lichtenstein - Steve’s Newsletter

Women's basketball has grown exponentially in the last two years, riding Clark's popularity to record highs in attendance and TV ratings. The 2024 NCAA Women's Championship Game drew more viewers than the Men's Final. While there were other stars in that contest, Clark, the NCAA's all-time leading scorer, was clearly the name at the top of the marquee.

Though a mere WNBA rookie in 2024, her presence dramatically altered the course of what was more of a niche league where only the really good teams thrived. Teams suddenly moved their home games to the biggest arenas when Clark's Indiana Fever came to town. The September 19 crowd at Washington's Capital One Arena set a league regular season record with 20,711 fans. One would expect the financial windfalls from the league's revenue boost to soon trickle down to all the players, many of whom choose to work overseas in the offseason to boost their earnings.

Clark's Fever wasn't the best team, finishing sixth in the regular season and getting swept in the first round by Connecticut. Her production was All-Star level, leading the league in assists, but not MVP worthy--she placed a mere fourth in the voting. Those facts, however, don't account for her overall impact on her respective sport, which was far greater than anyone else achieved this year.

David Gonos - Happy Hobby Sports Cards

As a former fantasy sports writer and a collector of sports cards, my definition of the “Best Athlete” of any given year is usually dusted with selfishness – how did this athlete impact me!?! I tell you that so you understand why I’m not choosing Simone Biles for her amazing Olympic run or F1 superstar champion Max Verstappen, since I don’t draft or collect them.

My choice came down to two sports card monsters: Caitlin Clark, who essentially made WNBA games request-worthy at sports bars and Dodgers DH Shohei Ohtani. The latter is my choice for several reasons.

There were plenty of reasons for Ohtani to not have a great 2024 season, including a record-breaking contract to shoulder, moving to a new team in a new league, a controversy centered around gambling and embezzling by his former interpreter, and – oh yeah –recovering from Tommy John surgery.

Shohei took those ingredients and churned out one of the greatest offensive seasons by anyone, ever, in any era, on any team, from any position. “Shotime” became the only member of the 50-HR/50-SB club, becoming the first player to ever win three MVP awards unanimously. Only Frank Robinson and Shohei Ohtani have won an MVP award in both leagues – and Ohtani did it in back-to-back seasons.

The scary part? My “Best Athlete” choice for 2024 returns to the mound in 2025.

Matt Musico - MLB Daily Dingers

It feels like I’m taking the easy way out, but it’s hard to look at Shohei Ohtani’s year and think he doesn’t deserve this honor. He signed a record-breaking (at the time) $700 million deal with the Dodgers last winter. This led to immediately facing the pressure of helping LA make a deep postseason run, along with performing at a high level individually while recovering from Tommy John surgery.

The results were eye-opening. He led the National League in home runs while becoming the first player to record at least 50 homers and 50 steals in one season. He also joined the 40-40 club in the fewest games ever and set a new franchise single-season record for home runs. That performance led to him winning his third MVP Award in four years.

Ohtani’s time with the Angels didn’t allow him an opportunity to show how he could perform under the pressure of a pennant race and the postseason. He proved it wasn’t a big deal while helping the Dodgers win their second World Series since 2020.

Aaron Bollwinkel - Live. Breathe. Ball.

I may cover basketball, but it’s hard to argue against any athlete in the world having a better year than baseball’s Shohei Ohtani. What Ohtani did this past season was the stuff of legends, and the myth-building only gets greater when you consider the maelstrom of drama that his season began with due to the gambling scandal. While, thanks to elbow surgery, Shohei may have been “limited” to displaying his prodigious talents as solely an offensive player this season, what an offensive player and what a season.

Ohtani became the first player in baseball history—you know, just 148 years—to hammer 50 home runs and steal 50 bases, finishing with an insane 54 dingers and 59 swipes, and, just for good measure, adding in 130 RBIs and batting .310. And as if that weren’t impressive enough, he decided to accomplish that first-ever 50/50 on a day that is perhaps the greatest single-game performance in baseball history, hitting 3 home runs, grabbing 2 stolen bases, banging out 6 hits—five of which were extra bases—and finishing with 10 RBIs.

Only one player in the history of baseball has accomplished all of those feats in their entire career, and it was Ohtani, who decided to be efficient and bang them all out on a single day. Ohtani then followed up his epic regular season by winning his first career championship and becoming just the second player ever, joining Frank Robinson, to win the MVP in both leagues—his third MVP in the last four seasons. That’s a lot of firsts for a game with the most robust statistical history of any major American sport and that has been around since before the moving assembly line.

Ohtani isn’t just a generational player; he is a centennial talent. We are watching Ohtani accomplish the type of awe-inspiring feats that typically get relegated to lore. Gods apparently do walk among us; fortunately for us all, his wrath is saved for baseballs.

Jacob Sutton - JSutt Hoops

There’s a lot of good choices, as we’ve had a lot of great athletes over the past year. Jannik Sinner — doping scandal aside — performed at an all-time level in tennis, Max Verstappen continued to dominate F1, and Caitlin Clark took the world by storm in the WNBA. Basketball being my Substack expertise, though, I have to go with Nikola Jokic, even if his 2023-24 season didn’t end in a championship.

Last season, he was just 0.2 assists per game away from averaging a 24-point triple-double on the year, had his 6th consecutive All-Star appearance, made the All-NBA First Team, and won MVP, making him just the 9th player in league history to have 3 MVPs.

Outside of a Nuggets team that couldn’t help him win a championship, it was hard to think he, personally, could get better — and yet he has. This season, he’s averaged over 30 points, 13 rebounds, and 9 assists per game on a league-leading 49.2% three-point shot, somehow extending his range to further dominate the game on the offensive side of the ball.

Should he win another MVP this year, he immediately catapults himself into, I believe, the top-5 player ever conversation, though some may debate that. While all the athletes I mentioned earlier took the world by storm, it feels as though no athlete, as an individual, is as inevitable as Nikola Jokic.

I’m not generally one to base the “Best Athlete of The Year” honor on achievements alone, because stats can be influenced by the athlete’s surrounding teammates and/or competitors. When you look at the year’s individual athletes themselves and how dominant and great they are, you can’t get past the Big Serb.

Noah Magaro-George - The Vic-And-Roll

Whether you followed the trials and tribulations of the San Antonio Spurs over the last 365 days, there is no doubt you have come across the name Victor Wembanyama on television, radio, podcast, or some form of written medium during that timeframe. The generational big man has been among the most viral athletes in basketball, and his omnipresence in the cultural landscape of the sport has been nothing short of remarkable, considering how irrelevant the Silver and Black have been in the postseason picture.

The 21-year-old has posted historic defensive numbers at the start of his career and has been more efficient than expected as a scorer. Yet no one can deny he has considerable room for improvement on both ends of the court, which should be a harrowing realization for every general manager trying to construct a contender for the next decade plus. We are only 100 games into the Wembanyama experience, and he is already resetting the limits of what esteemed experts thought possible for a seven-footer.

Perhaps no prospect other than LeBron James had more hype entering the league, and Wembanyama has lived up to the lofty billing. He alters the geometry of the hardwood for opposing offenses with his wingspan while stretching defenses to the logo with his jumper. The unfathomable square footage of his two-way dominance makes it easy to see why fans compare him to extraterrestrials. There isn't a soul on Earth who looks or hoops like him, and 2024 marked the first year of his planetary invasion.

Michael Baron - Just Mets

I don’t think the question is that easy to answer, although my gut feeling is what I am going with to best answer the question. I love what Simone Biles did in 2024, and given her age and what she has been through in her Olympic career, her accomplishments are that much more magnificent with three gold medals at the Paris Olympics last summer. She’s been to hell and back in her life, battled injury and mental trials, yet as a 27-year-old, defied the odds and raised her own bar of brilliance to a whole new level. For her excellence, she earned Sports Illustrated’s Sports Person of the Year, which puts a rubber stamp on these accolades. Having said all of that, in my gut, I thought of Shohei Ohtani first, so he gets the nod for me. He is every bit the modern marvel in baseball. He has redefined what a player can be in this sport, and he did things in this game that not only nobody has ever done, but nobody thought would or could ever be done by reaching the 50 home run, 50 stolen base milestone. He reached both in one game in September against the Marlins with a 6-for-6, 10 RBI night, a performance that included everything that makes Ohtani amazing at the plate with a classic display of power and speed all rolled into one night.

And to do it less than a year after undergoing a second Tommy John Surgery makes it that much more amazing in my eyes. It was a performance of the ages from start to finish for the game’s greatest and most popular attraction.

Mind you, I don’t think Ohtani was necessarily the most valuable player in the National League in the way I define that award, or even the best hitter in baseball in 2024. The latter would go to Aaron Judge in my view. But even if Judge was the best hitter in the game in 2024, there was nothing he did that hadn’t been done before, whereas Ohtani continuously built a campaign defined by new heights, new records, and new benchmarks for players in the game now and in the future.

Jarrett L. Spence - The Stop and Pop

When we talk about who was the best athlete in 2024, my pick is A’ja Wilson. A’ja put up a remarkable calendar year and I don’t think it’s talked about enough. She was the pinnacle of success not only for her league but for all athletes.

The surge of the women’s sports is on a fast trajectory. A’ja is a big part of that, as she is pushing the women’s basketball forward. She won her third league MVP, which is tied for most in WNBA history with Sheryl Swoopes (2000, 2002, 2005), Lisa Leslie (2001, 2004, 2006) and Lauren Jackson (2003, 2007, 2010). She became the first unanimous WNBA MVP since Cynthia Cooper won it in the league’s inaugural season. She scored 1,021 total points for a 26.9 PPG average. She grabbed 451 rebounds and averaged 2.6 blocks. All of these numbers now rank as the highest single-season averages in league history. Her Las Vegas Aces did not win their third straight championship unfortunately but A’ja still took home some more gold. She was named the MVP for Team USA as they won Gold in the 2024 Paris Olympics. This is A’ja’s second Olympic gold. Nike announced they will give her a signature shoe (finally), the A’One, which is set to debut in 2025. To top off all the on-court success, she is just as successful off the court. She became a New York Times Bestselling Author, with her debut book, “Dear Black Girls: How To Be True To You”.

A’ja is the best player in the league. The W is on the uprise with her as the face of it. All these accomplishments hold more weight to me because of the circumstances of the WNBA. A young league that is looking to grow and gain more fans. It is no secret that the league has more eyes on it this year due to the 2023 Draft, but A’ja showed the fans that she is arguably the greatest to play women’s basketball. This was the league’s biggest season to date and she put together the greatest single-season in league history.

Stefano Rubino - The Hockey Writers - NHL News, Rumors & Opinion

When determining who had the best 2024, it could have been easy to say big names like Patrick Mahomes or Max Verstappen, but with his accomplishments and records, Alex Pereira is my athlete of the year. Competing three times within a calendar year is impressive, and winning all three fights is even more remarkable. Between April and October of this year, Pereira successfully defended his championship title three times, finishing all his opponents in those bouts.

Despite joining the promotion relatively recently, Pereira's achievements have already solidified his legacy. He climbed up the ranks of not only the UFC fighter rankings on short notice but also in many (including my own) all-time fighter rankings, showing how impressive his victories have come and the accomplishments that came with them. Pereira first faced a dangerous challenger in Jamahal Hill at UFC 300. While many fans favoured Pereira heading into the matchup, Hill had demonstrated his knockout power in previous fights. Despite Hill's pre-fight confidence, Alex finished him in the first round. Next, on very short notice (two weeks to be exact), Alex took a rematch with former champion Jiri Prochazka. Jiri had hurt Alex multiple times in their first fight, raising concerns among fans about whether Pereira had adequately prepared for this rematch.

However, Pereira delivered a nearly flawless performance, defending against Jiri’s takedowns, avoiding significant foot damage, and dropping him in the first round. Just moments into the second round, Pereira landed a flush head kick to finish the fight. Remaining active, Pereira faced a third opponent, Khalil Rountree Jr.

Although Rountree was not ranked in the top 5, he was a lethal striker, recently scoring a violent finish against Anthony Smith. Khalil's speed troubled Alex in the opening rounds and even stunned him momentarily. However, Pereira stayed defensively responsible and capitalized on Rountree’s fatigue at the end of the third round. From then on, Pereira dominated the fourth round and eventually finished Khalil with vicious body shots. Critics often argue that all three of Pereira's opponents were strikers, making them favourable matchups for him. While this analysis has some merit, questions still linger about Pereira’s chances against more skilled grapplers, such as Magomed Ankalaev. Despite these concerns, Pereira’s achievements this year deserve recognition. Maintaining his level of activity takes a significant toll on the body. Many fighters would find it challenging to compete three times a year, let alone win all three fights.

As a champion, there is even more incentive to fight less frequently. Many champions take long breaks to ensure they are as healthy as possible when defending their titles. We have also seen other champions, like Israel Adesanya, struggle to perform at their best due to a busy schedule. He set the record for the shortest time to defend a title three times in the UFC, at 175 days and was the seventh player in UFC history to record three title defences in a calendar year. Regardless of their striking backgrounds, all three of Pereira's opponents possessed the power and skills to defeat him.