The year is coming to an end, which means it’s time we all took a vibe check.
Across the Bay Area sports scene, at least, would you believe the upstart Sharks are winning in this department?
The claim would have been worthy of the penalty box this time last year, when they were skating toward the NHL’s worst record, but the answer was unanimous in the unscientific survey I’ve conducted in press boxes over the past month.
A lot can change in a year, and this trip around the sun felt like a particularly momentous one in Bay Area sports, Macklin Celebrin-ania notwithstanding.
Since the NHL lottery balls bounced the Sharks’ way in May, giving them the right to draft the 18-year-old phenom Celebrini, it’s been all smiles at the SAP Center.
It hasn’t yet resulted in wins — the Sharks are 11-20-6 and in last place again — but the arrival of Celebrini and a cast of other young players has given the franchise a sense of direction and the fanbase a sense of hope, which is more than can be said for the region’s other pro teams.
The year began with Patrick Mahomes dashing the 49ers’ Super Bowl dreams for the second time in five seasons and will end with them worse off than at any other point under coach Kyle Shanahan. An offseason defined by contract disputes and a regular season rocked by injuries and off-the-field tragedies culminated with them being eliminated from postseason contention before kickoff this past Sunday (at the site where they missed out on a Lombardi in 2020).
Extending a remarkable streak, the 49ers have either made it to the NFC Championship Game or missed the playoffs entirely for 22 straight seasons dating back to 2003, falling victim this year to the equally reliable Madden Curse. In June, Christian McCaffrey was named the cover athlete of the video game and within months was one of more than half a dozen starters on injured reserve, appearing in only four games with a sprained right knee.
While Shanahan appears here to stay, the past season and its tumult could be seen as a dividing line from the success and stability of 2019-2023 — with four conference title games and two Super Bowl appearances in five years — and a new, less certain era.
In that case, the 49ers have some company.
The Splash Brothers broke up, leaving the Warriors rudderless in the wake. Their neighbors in Mission Bay, the Giants, are opting to play the hits over figuring out how to hit. And across the bridge, the Coliseum sits empty while Oakland grapples with the loss of its last major pro team.
The water is no calmer at the collegiate level, where Stanford and Cal swapped out their Pac-12 patches for ACC ones and San Jose State found itself at the center of a hot-button issue.
Not long after its last game in the Pac-12, Stanford learned even bigger changes were afoot when Tara VanDerveer announced her retirement in April after 38 seasons, three national championships and 13 Final Four appearances at the head of the women’s basketball program.
By the time students were back on campus in the fall, attention had shifted from Palo Alto to San Jose, where the women’s volleyball team had become entangled in the national political debate over transgender participation in sports. Southern Utah became the first team to forfeit against the Spartans on Sept. 14, and six more went on to follow. Seven players transferred out of the program after the season.
Twelve days later, a sellout crowd of 46,889 showed up for the final game at the Oakland Coliseum, which the A’s had called home since 1968. The day after their first homestand of the season, the organization officially announced what had long been in the cards: that it would be their last in Oakland. The fanbase responded with a season-long protest against owner John Fisher before turning out in droves for the emotional farewell.
The decision to uproot from their home of 57 years stung not only because it was entirely preventable but because of its permanence. There will be many more sunny summer afternoons in Oakland, but you’ll no longer be able to hop on BART and enjoy a major league game. (It’s a nice Amtrak ride to Sacramento, though.)
The Earth continues to spin, but we’ll never see Steph Curry and Klay Thompson sink 3s for the same team again. The way it looks, probably never win another ring again. (Although Curry — and Steve Kerr — added to his trophy case this summer, winning a gold medal with Team USA.)
The day many Giants fans eagerly awaited came Sept. 30, when the club fired Farhan Zaidi and inserted Buster Posey in his place as the president of baseball operations. But the day every Giants fan dreaded arrived earlier in the year, with the news of Willie Mays’ death in June.
Mays died at 93 just days before the Giants were set to play a special game in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, in one of many losses within the Bay Area sports community this past year that also included Warriors assistant Dejan Milocevic, 46, Giants Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, 86, legendary Warriors player and coach Al Attles, 87, and Rickey Henderson, the greatest Oakland A’s player ever, at 65.
In loss but also with new life, the local landscape shifted permanently in 2024.
It will be remembered as the year we lost the A’s, the Super Bowl and so many icons, but also as the one when the new WNBA team got its name (the Valkyries) and its first players, when a new independent baseball team (the Ballers) began competing for Oakland’s attention and as a memorable inaugural season for Bay FC, which qualified for the NWSL playoffs.
Looking ahead to 2025, there is a potential void looming in the Bay Area’s sports ecosystem. The 49ers stumbled, the Warriors’ window is closing and the Giants are stuck in neutral. Will it be Celebrini and the Sharks who steal the region’s attention? One of the newcomers on the scene?
Don’t forget: We’re barely more than two months away from NBA All-Star weekend.
