Party in the city where the Heat is on!

Welcome to No. 2, Miami.

Jimmy Butler & Co. have the league's longest active win streak at five games, a run bookended by two tight victories over the Philadelphia 76ers. Miami's rise coincides with some shaky play from the Staples Center roommates, as the Los Angeles Lakers (losers in four of six) and the LA Clippers (losers in four of seven) have hit speed bumps on the road to 2020.

Throughout the regular season, our panel (ESPN's Tim MacMahon, Andre' Snellings, Royce Young and Bobby Marks, and The Undefeated's Marc J. Spears) is ranking all 30 teams from top to bottom, taking stock of which teams are playing the best basketball now and which teams are looking most like title contenders.

Previous rankings: Week 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Training camp | Free agency | Post-Finals

1. Milwaukee Bucks
Record: 29-5
Week 10 ranking: 1

The Bucks got blown out by the 76ers on Christmas Day but bounced back with two straight wins, even with both Giannis Antetokounmpo (back) and Eric Bledsoe (fibula) sidelined. Both are due to return soon, though, and the Bucks have latitude to let them fully recover with a light short-term schedule featuring eight straight games against teams with losing records and an overall win percentage under 37%. -- Snellings

This week: @CHI, MIN, SA

2. Miami Heat
Record: 24-8
Week 10 ranking: 4

In a wide-open Rookie of the Year race, Tyler Herro is making a strong case. And not just in the quality numbers -- 13.9 points on quality shooting percentages -- but more in the big moments and big shots he keeps producing. He's shooting almost 60% from 3 in clutch time and is 3-of-3 on go-ahead 3s in the final minute, the most makes in that situation in the league this season. He did it again against the 76ers on Saturday, draining a go-ahead 3 with 6.9 seconds left. Ben Simmons sent it to overtime, but Miami finished it there, going to 2-1 against Philly on the season. -- Young

This week: @WSH, TOR, @ORL, POR

3. LA Clippers
Record: 23-11
Week 10 ranking: 3

They won the game that mattered last week, or at least that's probably how their fanbase feels. The Christmas Day win over the Lakers was played at an extremely high level and obviously the Clippers put a lot into it. They followed it up with a pretty lackluster performance a couple of days later against the Jazz, which drops them to 3-4 in their past seven. Against Utah they scored only 15 points in the fourth quarter, a continuation of a mildly concerning recent fourth-quarter trend. In those past seven games, the Clippers have a 100.6 offensive rating in the fourth quarter, down almost 17 points per 100 possessions from the rest of the game. -- Young

This week: @SAC, DET, MEM, NY

4. Los Angeles Lakers
Record: 26-7
Week 10 ranking: 2

The Lakers stumbled a bit as their 2019 schedule was closing -- their final game before 2020 was Sunday night's win over the Mavs -- but what a difference a year and newcomer Anthony Davis makes. The Lakers were 13-9 when they entered 2019 and finished 37-45 overall. Davis and the Lakers will enter 2020 with a West-best 26-7 record and 18-4 mark within the conference. -- Spears

This week: PHX, NO, DET

5. Boston Celtics
Record: 22-8
Week 10 ranking: 5

If the All-Star voting concluded today, the Celtics would be represented by three players -- Kemba Walker, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Though the pick of Brown might not be a popular choice outside of New England, consider what he has had done in the past five games before losing at home Saturday to Toronto. During the Celtics five-game winning streak, Brown averaged a team-high 26.4 points, 60.3% shooting from the field, 47.2% from 3 and 7.6 rebounds. -- Marks

This week: @CHA, ATL, @CHI

6. Denver Nuggets
Record: 23-9
Week 10 ranking: 8

Sunday's game against the Kings was an exciting one for Nuggets fans -- Michael Porter Jr. got his first career start, and he made the most of it. The Nuggets' stratospheric ceiling has somewhat become connected to Porter's development, and there has been a sometimes frustratingly patient approach taken on by the organization. But it appears to be paying off, with Porter dropping 19 points on 8-of-10 shooting in 26 minutes against the Kings. It's one game, and the Nuggets won't be overreacting to it, but Porter's talent is undeniable and it's hard to not get excited about this being the start to something impactful. -- Young

This week: @HOU, @IND, @WSH

7. Toronto Raptors
Record: 22-11
Week 10 ranking: 6

Seven of the top eight players in the Raptors' rotation have missed at least five games this season, including current absences from Pascal Siakam, Marc Gasol and Norman Powell. Despite the injuries, the Raptors remain in contention in the East and continue to pull off signature wins like Saturday's blowout of the Celtics and last week's historic comeback over the Mavericks. Chris Boucher, Patrick McCaw, OG Anunoby and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson have each stepped up with big efforts to support central figures Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet and Serge Ibaka during this stretch. -- Snellings

This week: CLE, @MIA, @BKN

8. Dallas Mavericks
Record: 21-11
Week 10 ranking: 9

Tim Hardaway Jr.'s hamstring strain could be a significant blow to the Mavs. He averaged 16.9 points, shooting 46.7% from the field and 43.8% from 3-point range, since joining the Mavs' starting lineup. His athleticism and quick-trigger jumper complement Luka Doncic well, as evidenced by Dallas' net rating of plus-16.9 points per 100 possessions when they're on the floor together. -- MacMahon

This week: @OKC, BKN, CHA

9. Houston Rockets
Record: 22-11
Week 10 ranking: 7

The Rockets worried about James Harden's heavy workload (37.7 minutes per game with a 37.6% usage rate) even before the sprained toe that caused him to sit out Sunday's loss to the Pelicans. The good news is that Eric Gordon is back after missing six weeks following knee surgery. "As we go forward, he can take a big burden off a lot of guys hopefully," Rockets coach Mike D'Antoni said of Gordon, who scored 20 points in 22 minutes in his return. -- MacMahon

This week: DEN, PHI

10. Philadelphia 76ers
Record: 23-12
Week 10 ranking: 10

Head coach Brett Brown summed it up best after the Sixers' Christmas Day blowout win against Milwaukee. "I think this team is designed for the playoffs. I believe the road we have traveled so far has been a little bit erratic, at times. But I think the landing spot is exciting." Another bump in the road came Friday night, as the 76ers fell in Orlando for the second time this season. The loss to the Magic and the next night to Miami has sunk Philadelphia's road record to 7-10, in comparison to a 16-2 mark at home. -- Marks

This week: @IND, @HOU

11. Utah Jazz
Record: 20-12
Week 10 ranking: 12

Beating the Clippers on the road Saturday night gave the Jazz a statement-type win during their active 7-1 run. Mike Conley played only 19 minutes during that stretch because of his nagging hamstring strain, pushing Donovan Mitchell to point guard, where he has thrived. Mitchell has averaged 27.0 points and 6.3 assists while shooting 52.1% from the field over the past eight games. -- MacMahon

This week: DET, @CHI, @ORL

12. Indiana Pacers
Record: 21-12
Week 10 ranking: 11

The Pacers have lost three straight road games, including Saturday's "Holiday Bowl" against the Pelicans that made NBA history when all three Holiday brothers were on the court simultaneously. The Pacers have a good chance to reverse that losing trend to start the new decade -- five of their first eight games in 2020 come against teams with losing records. -- Snellings

This week: PHI, DEN, @ATL

13. Oklahoma City Thunder
Record: 17-15
Week 10 ranking: 14

That's six wins out of seven for OKC, capped with an extremely impressive road win in Toronto without Danilo Gallinari and Dennis Schroder (the Raptors were missing Pascal Siakam, though). Chris Paul has a vintage look to him, orchestrating in crunch time, hitting big shots and leading a young developing roster. Along with it, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is blossoming; he set a career high (32 points) a week ago and has matched it twice since. In his past six games, he is averaging 27.3 points on 53% shooting. -- Young

This week: DAL, @SA, @CLE

14. Brooklyn Nets
Record: 16-15
Week 10 ranking: 13

Spencer Dinwiddie might have said it best after Thursday's loss to New York: "Too much eggnog." Not only did the Nets score a season-low 82 points, but they did so making only eight two-point field goals. According to research by the Elias Sports Bureau, it's a feat not done done since Nov. 22, 1950 when the Minneapolis Lakers and Fort Wayne Pistons scored a combined 37 points on four made field goals each. -- Marks

This week: @MIN, @DAL, TOR

15. Orlando Magic
Record: 14-18
Week 10 ranking: 17

The Magic went 2-1 last week, including their second win of the season over the 76ers, who are the only team above .500 that Orlando has been able to beat this season (they are 0-15 against all others). Their other 12 wins have come against teams with an overall win percentage under 33%. -- Snellings

This week: ATL, @WSH, MIA, UTAH

16. San Antonio Spurs
Record: 13-18
Week 10 ranking: 18

The Spurs went 2-1 last week, recording their two highest-scoring games of the season in the wins and coming up a couple of points shy of triple digits in the loss. LaMarcus Aldridge averaged 27.3 points in the three games and is suddenly letting it fly from 3-point range. He was 3-of-5 from long distance in his 40-point performance Monday against Memphis, matching a career high for 3s made that he surpassed Saturday, when he had 25 points and was 5-of-6 on 3s against the Pistons. -- MacMahon

This week: GS, OKC, @MIL

17. Portland Trail Blazers
Record: 14-19
Week 10 ranking: 15

A four-game winning streak gets replaced by a three-game losing streak last week, summing up much of the season for the Blazers. But it could turn again for them, with winnable games ahead this week against the Suns, Knicks and Wizards. The games lost to injury for Portland is the primary culprit for its consistency issues, the Blazers aren't as good defensively this season (they were pretty average anyway last season) and they have taken a considerable step back offensively. If it's going to turn around, Damian Lillard might need to summon the playoff version of himself for the next, say, 49 games. -- Young

This week: PHX, @NY, @WSH, @MIA

18. Chicago Bulls
Record: 13-20
Week 10 ranking: 20

Lauri Markkanen has had a respectable December, averaging 17.6 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.8 3-pointers made in 31.3 minutes. The 7-footer fought through the lingering effects of an illness with 25 points and four 3s in a 116-81 win over Atlanta on Saturday. Markkanen's play this month is good news for the Bulls after he struggled in a new offensive system earlier this season. -- Spears

This week: MIL, UTAH, BOS

19. New Orleans Pelicans
Record: 11-23
Week 10 ranking: 28

The Pelicans have the longest active winning streak in the West with four straight victories, all against teams that are currently in playoff position. It has helped that Derrick Favors, who has had injury issues and took a personal leave after the sudden death of his mother, looks like the quality big man New Orleans thought it was getting when it acquired him. He has averaged a double-double during the streak (10.5 points, 14.5 rebounds) and the Pelicans have given up only 100 points per 100 possessions with Favors on the floor. -- MacMahon

This week: @LAL, @SAC

20. Memphis Grizzlies
Record: 13-21
Week 10 ranking: 22

De'Anthony Melton, a 21-year-old guard acquired in a summer trade with the Suns, might be another long-term fit for the Grizzlies. He has solidified himself as a rotation player in December, when the Grizzlies are 8-8, averaging 9.1 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.8 assists in 20.3 minutes. His plus-minus in the month (plus-98) is 78 points better than any of his Memphis teammates. -- MacMahon

This week: @SAC, @LAC, @PHX

21. Charlotte Hornets
Record: 13-22
Week 10 ranking: 19

The theme for the Hornets moving forward is all about consistency. With PJ Washington returning from a hand injury, head coach James Borrego can find continuity with a starting lineup that features Washington, Terry Rozier, Devonte' Graham, Miles Bridges and Bismack Biyombo. In the 12 games with the above starting unit, Charlotte is 6-6 with three of those losses by a combined 14 points. -- Marks

This week: BOS, @CLE, @DAL

22. Phoenix Suns
Record: 12-20
Week 10 ranking: 21

The Suns won their first game since Dec. 9 with a 112-110 victory at Sacramento that snapped an eight-game losing streak. Perhaps a key to the victory was first-year head coach Monty Williams' pregame meeting with Devin Booker, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Ricky Rubio. Oubre says the message to the players was to hold everyone to a high standard, and they'd be benched if they are not living up to it. -- Spears

This week: @POR, @LAL, NY, MEM

23. Sacramento Kings
Record: 12-21
Week 10 ranking: 16

The Kings quietly have the longest losing streak in the Western Conference at seven games. Sacramento last won a game on Dec. 15 at Golden State and has not won a home game since Dec. 11. One key to fixing the Kings is a healthy De'Aaron Fox, who has been hampered by back and ankle injuries this season. -- Spears

This week: LAC, MEM, NO

24. Detroit Pistons
Record: 12-21
Week 10 ranking: 23

The Pistons have lost six of their past seven games, with a blowout win over the Wizards as the lone bright spot. Their defense has been the clear culprit in their struggles: During their past 15 games, the Pistons are 6-0 when holding opponents under 110 points but 0-9 when their opponents reach that threshold. Their upcoming schedule this week is brutal, with the middle four games of a six-game trip that feature stops against the Jazz, Clippers and Lakers. -- Snellings

This week: @UTAH, @LAC, @GS, @LAL

25. Minnesota Timberwolves
Record: 11-20
Week 10 ranking: 24

The Timberwolves have lost five of their past six games without Karl-Anthony Towns (knee), and 12 of their past 13 overall. Their one recent win came over the Kings in a game in which Sacramento lost both De'Aaron Fox and Marvin Bagley III early due to injury. Andrew Wiggins (flu-like symptoms) joined Towns on the bench for Saturday's loss to the Cavaliers, and both are considered day-to-day heading into their next two games against the Nets and Bucks. -- Snellings

This week: BKN, @MIL, GS, @CLE

26. New York Knicks
Record: 9-24
Week 10 ranking: 27

It is hard to gauge New York's 5-6 record since interim head coach Mike Miller took over -- the five wins have come against Golden State, Sacramento, Atlanta, Brooklyn and Washington. One thing for certain, though: This Knicks squad is more competitive, despite a lethargic loss to Washington last Monday. In the 11 games, New York has a point differential of minus-2.8 compared to minus-10.8 when David Fizdale was in charge. -- Marks

This week: POR, @PHX, @LAC

27. Golden State Warriors
Record: 9-25
Week 10 ranking: 29

Perhaps the only saving grace during the injury-plagued Warriors' losing is that they could have a shot at the top pick in the 2020 NBA draft after a 5-24 start. But after winning four of the past five games, Golden State entered Sunday as one of six teams with 10 or fewer wins. The last time the Warriors had the top overall draft pick was 1995, when they selected Maryland forward Joe Smith over the likes of Kevin Garnett, Antonio McDyess, Rasheed Wallace and Damon Stoudamire. -- Spears

This week: @SA, @MIN, DET

28. Cleveland Cavaliers
Record: 10-22
Week 10 ranking: 26

The first domino of the Cavaliers expiring contracts fell when reserve Jordan Clarkson was moved to Utah in exchange for former top-five pick Dante Exum. The trade signaled that Cleveland is open for business when it pertains to moving their veterans in their last season -- Tristan Thompson, John Henson, Matthew Dellavedova and Brandon Knight. The trade also signified a fresh start for Exum. In the win at Minnesota, Exum played a season-high 16 minutes and scored eight points off the bench. -- Marks

This week: @TOR, CHA, OKC, MIN

29. Washington Wizards
Record: 9-22
Week 10 ranking: 25

In the riveting battle to see who the worst defensive team in the league will be this season, the Wizards have really taken it up (or down?) a notch. They are almost three full points per 100 possessions worse than the Hawks after flipping back and forth for much of the past month. At a 116.2 defensive rating, the Wizards are on track to be the worst defensive team since, well, last season, when the Cavs checked in at 116.8. -- Young

This week: MIA, ORL, POR, DEN

30. Atlanta Hawks
Record: 6-27
Week 10 ranking: 30

The Hawks have lost 10 straight games for the second time this season. Atlanta, however, is hoping that guard Trae Young, who is averaging 28.5 points, will return soon after missing Saturday's 116-81 loss at Chicago because of a sprained right ankle. The Hawks are the only team in the league with fewer than nine wins. -- Spears

This week: @ORL, @BOS, IND

Last week, we presented our MLB All-Decade Team. Now, it's time to hand out individual and team awards.

From the player, team, game and moment of the decade to the best brawl, blooper and baseball jargon, Bradford Doolittle and Sam Miller serve up some traditional and outside-of-the-box honors as we bid farewell to the 2010s.

Player of the decade

Doolittle: He led all hitters with a .317 average during the decade, and with 941 RBIs, he's one of three hitters to top 900. Clearly the best player of the decade was ... Miguel Cabrera. OK, obviously I don't believe that. I'm just trying to figure out if you could export the decade's numbers to any era of sports analysis from the past century and not arrive at the conclusion that Mike Trout was the best player. I don't think so.

Even though a few players had a higher average, he hit .305, so he was safely above the hallowed .300 level. And, sure, his RBI totals have been lower than you'd think -- for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with Trout's ability to drive in runs -- but he scored over 900 runs and stole 200 bases. Add in the Gold Gloves and I don't see how you can even fake an argument that Trout wasn't the best player -- even if we ignore every tier of advanced metrics. Of course, once you do consider the metrics, there is no one even close, even though he didn't really start to produce until the third year of the decade. There is no argument for anybody else. Oh, wait, here's one I've seen somewhere on the web: He has no rings!

Miller: If not for Trout, we might be talking about how pitcher-heavy the list of contenders was. If not for Trout, I think we'd actually skip Cabrera, and Adrian Beltre and Joey Votto and Robinson Cano, and go right to the three future Hall of Fame starters who were great in 2010 and great in 2019 and pretty reliably great in between: Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.

Collectively, they claimed eight Cy Young awards and had 20 top-five finishes, and they rank 1-2-3 in wins, WAR, strikeouts, innings. Even Scherzer's third-place WAR -- 56 -- would have led all starting pitchers in the 2000s, the 1980s, the 1960s and the 1940s.

Best Mike Trout season

Miller: I could write a paragraph in defense of every single one, other than his short debut in 2011. Heck, that one had some charm, too. But in 2012, when Trout was a rookie, he was still so fast as to be undefendable, and I continually think back to a day sometime in August, when I was following him for a long magazine profile. On that day, my memory tells me, he led the American League in hitting WAR, fielding WAR and baserunning WAR. Baseball is one sport that ropes together different types of athletes, and Trout was, that season, the best in the world (or close to it) in every type. Trout probably got better at baseball than he was that year, but he never got faster, so as a singular superstar he never got more fun to watch than that.

Doolittle: I will go with 2016, which for me was Trout's most stark combination of athleticism, skill, durability and contextual performance. That was the first year when his absolute mastery of the strike zone really kicked in (116 walks, .441 OBP). He stole 30 bases and led MLB with 123 runs. He posted positive defensive metrics and led the majors in win probability added. And most importantly, he matched his career high with 159 games played. Really, though, take your pick. Just going by bWAR, his sixth-best season ranks as the 15th best among all position players during the 2010s.

Game of the decade

Miller: Thanks to the wild-card round, and a greater-than-usual number of World Series going the distance, this was the decade of the Sudden Death Postseason Game, where both teams faced possible elimination. There were 43 of them. In the three previous decades combined, there were only 42.

I loved all of them -- especially the 2014 wild-card game between the A's and Royals and the Kershaw-in-relief National League Division Series Game 5 in 2016 -- but I don't see how not to pick the final game of the 2016 postseason, when the Cubs finally won their first World Series in a century: Unbearably tense for four innings, then the Cubs pulling ahead and seeming to be in control, then Rajai Davis of all people homering off Aroldis Chapman of all people in the eighth, then a badly gassed Chapman surviving the bottom of the ninth inning throwing nothing but looping sliders, then the rain delay, and extra innings, and the Cubs going ahead but Cleveland nearly coming back again, and Kris Bryant grinning as he threw out Michael Martinez for the final out. It felt like it put the past century to bed, like it was the last remaining storyline from the 1900s. It might be another century before anything in baseball carries as much emotional baggage as that game did.

Doolittle: Since I've covered each of the past four postseasons and have been attached to an eventual pennant winner all four times, I'm heavily biased toward the best of the recent postseasons. Although I do have a personal attachment to that 2014 AL wild-card game that keeps it vivid in my memory. I was staying in a cabin in Big Sur with no Wi-Fi or cellular connection while it played out. I could get a faint signal if I walked down through the trees to the highway and hung out by the side of the road in the dead of night. So I followed the game like that, with the basic game app I had going giving me updates every five minutes or so, hoping I wouldn't be accosted by a bear. And that's the way I watched the Royals' comeback unfold. It was pretty awesome.

The back-and-forth Game 5 of the 2017 World Series stands out. That was Houston's 13-12 win in 10 innings that ended on an Alex Bregman RBI single off Kenley Jansen. The twists and turns of that game were unbelievable.

But I doubt I'll ever experience a more intense sports event than Game 7 between the Cubs and Indians, especially given the historical context that everyone following both teams knew so well. Chicago hadn't won since 1908, which we all know, but it seems like we kind of overlook how close the Indians came to winning for the first time since 1948 -- and perpetuating the mythology of the Cubs' curse. When Davis homered off Chapman, the shift in energy at Progressive Field was surreal. The fan split that night was pretty close to 50-50. So the energy and noise levels at that moment remained about the same -- off the charts. But the source of those things flipped in an instant. It was the strangest thing I've encountered at a game. And from a professional standpoint, I was tasked with filing the end-of-game instant reaction piece that was supposed to capture the exhilaration of a city snapping an epic title drought. But the identity of that city kept changing, so with all of that going on, I had to write two such stories at the same time and update them with each plate appearance. It was intense.

Weirdest career arc of the decade

Miller: One's mind naturally goes to the great player who unexpectedly collapses (e.g. Tim Lincecum) or the scrub who unexpectedly bursts into stardom (e.g. Max Muncy), but I'll pick the pretty good pitcher who didn't do anything more extraordinary than stay pretty good: Bartolo Colon.

Colon ended the previous decade with an ERA slightly better than league average as a 36-year-old starter on the White Sox. His story: out of baseball entirely in 2010; undergoing pioneering stem cell surgery in the Dominican Republic; back in baseball as an average starter on the Yankees in 2011; pretty good starter suspended for PEDs as an Athletic in 2012; 40-year-old All-Star in Oakland in 2013, receiving Cy Young votes for the first time in nearly a decade; 202 innings as a Met in 2014, as a 41-year-old, his first time passing 200 innings since 2005; 14 wins as a 42-year-old Met in 2015; his first career homer and first career walk as a 43-year-old Met in 2016, and another All-Star appearance; maybe the most beloved player in baseball at 44; nearly threw a no-hitter in 2018, at age 45. He did it all with, basically, nothing but good control of a fastball that was one of the slowest in the game. Even at 45, he would occasionally lean back and throw 93, against an average velocity of 87. He started the decade out of the game, ended it out of the game, but still ended up tied (with Gerrit Cole) for 27th most wins in baseball over those 10 years.

Doolittle: One thing that defines the decade to me is that, largely because of analytics, player development at the big league level became more essential than ever. So I'm inclined to pick someone who fits that narrative. Collapses are sad. Thus I'll go with Charlie Morton. Through 2016, Charlie had nine big league seasons under his belt. He was 46-71 with an ERA+ of 84 and had struck out 6.3 batters per nine innings. After the 2015 season, when Morton was already 31 years old, the Pirates shipped him to the Phillies for a pitcher named David Whitehead. That guy not only never reached the majors but in fact lasted only one more season in professional baseball.

Morton famously started to turn things around during his last season with the Phillies. But to split the career numbers cleanly: Since 2017 -- his age 33, 34 and 35 campaigns -- Morton has gone 45-16 with a 131 OPS+ and 10.7 strikeouts per 9. He throws harder than ever and videos of his ability to tunnel pitches look like clips from David Copperfield. (The magician, not the picaresque Dickens title character.) I'm not sure Morton's leap could have happened in any decade but this one. For all the hand-wringing about what analytics have done to the game, the stories of Morton, Justin Turner, Daniel Murphy, J.D. Martinez and many others have at least in part been driven by them.

Moment of the decade

Doolittle: The last out of the 2016 World Series -- when Bryant picked up Martinez's dribbler and the smile broke out on his face even before the out was recorded. When a moment can be communicated with an indelible image, that's the one that does it for me.

Miller: Happy moment: Vin Scully's final send-off. Bummer moment: Armando Galarraga completing, then losing, his perfect game on a blown call at first base. Suspense moment: Alex Gordon holding at third base in the final inning of the 2014 World Series. An entire season came down to a third-base coach, and when Sal Perez popped out six pitches later it set up an all-time what-if for future baseball historians.

Blooper of the decade

Doolittle: I mean, it was all good, clean fun, but it was pretty embarrassing when the cameraman got beaned with a poorly thrown ceremonial first pitch last year at Guaranteed Rate Field. I missed it live, unfortunately, but they held a news conference before the game the next day. It turned out the woman who threw the pitch is an employee at the ballpark -- but they probably didn't need to hold a news conference for her.

Miller: This was the decade that the blooper -- played in quick-cut succession on stadium scoreboards or in TV news packages -- was replaced by the GIF, replaying endlessly for maximum parsing. Because of that shift, I've lost track of what a blooper even is anymore. Is Tim Lincecum shoveling sunflower seeds into his mouth in the Giants' dugout -- probably my favorite GIF of the decade, but far more about the cinematography, pacing and editing than any actual fail -- a blooper? Is Elvis Andrus repeatedly attempting to rub Adrian Beltre's head a blooper? For a good three years around 2012-2014, the standard "blooper" was just Hunter Pence playing baseball in his awkward, effective way. But the best blooper of the decade would work in any format, in any decade: It's the first time you saw The Freeze. He chases down his opponent with breathtaking efficiency, and then, just as he is about to take the lead, the blooperiest moment of the decade bloops.

Home run of the decade

Doolittle: David Freese's game winner in the 11th inning of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series against Texas was a career-maker. That's especially true given that it came on the heels of his two-run triple off Neftali Feliz to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth, when Texas was one agonizing out from its first championship. As many big homers that came after that in the next few postseasons -- Davis against the Cubs in 2016; Jose Altuve to beat the Yankees in the most recent ALCS -- Freese's is the one with the most direct impact on a championship. Beyond that, there weren't any record breakers -- single-season homers or career homers -- to contend for this title.

Miller: In the era of four postseason rounds, we tend to snub what happens in the regular season, so I'll pick Evan Longoria's walk-off homer on the last day of the 2011 season. It came just moments after the final score was posted in the Baltimore-Boston game, a one-two punch that elevated the Rays to a playoff appearance, and it was probably our most shared regular-season moment of this decade. (That or Derek Jeter's walk-off hit in his final home game.) Along with the stakes, Longoria's was also just a purely beautiful thing: Barely off the ground, barely over the wall, barely inside the foul pole.

Team of the decade

Miller: Is this "most successful" or "most representative" or "most influential" or some combination of the three? I'll go with the combination option: It's the Houston Astros.

Yes, the Astros were under .500 for the decade, had three of the six worst team seasons in the decade, and won only one World Series title. But the Astros' narrative arc was this decade's most influential story: They sank into the lowest pit of terribleness by design, stripping away every bit of How Things Are Done until they could design a franchise around an almost amoralistic application of modern management theory. They eventually blew the doors off the rest of their competition -- the World Series in 2017, but also a three-year run of regular-season dominance that probably tops any since the Yankees and A's of the late 1920s and early 1930s. They finished the final season of the decade with as many as six or seven future Hall of Famers, all of them either developed by Houston or, in Justin Verlander's and Gerrit Cole's case, born again in Houston.

They also alienated almost everybody -- their own players, their beat writers, their rivals, some of their own front-office staff. And now, as the decade comes to a close, the arc seems to have reached its dramatic final phase, with the Astros as anti-heroes perhaps poised to face real backlash (for the trash cans, for Brandon Taubman) or else win out and reshape the sport in their vision, with GM Jeff Luhnow's underlings now spreading out to populate other teams' front offices. This was the team that did more than any other team to make scorched-earth rebuilds routine, to make Edgertronic cameras ubiquitous, to establish the infield shift as the default alignment, to reframe secondary pitches (sliders, curves and splitters) as primary pitches, and to put dozens of minor league teams under threat of contraction. And they were responsible, in the 106/107/111-loss seasons from 2011 to 2013, for about 80% of the decade's best bloopers, too.

Doolittle: For better or worse, I think it's been the Astros. They typify so many things that have come to the fore over the past 10 years, and many of those things also serve as a lens to overall societal changes, particularly in the areas of business, finance and technology. A drive for efficiency, a bottom line of the means being justified by the results (OK, it was already like that), the willingness to push the boundaries of the competitive arena, the embracing of technology without concern for its human implications, an almost paranoid preference for protecting information and controlling the message. I could write a couple of books on any one of those things. But with the developments of the past couple of months, I've really changed my thinking in a lot of ways about baseball. Mostly, I've been reminded that this is supposed to be fun. How you win might not be as important as actually winning, but it does matter. A lot. The bottom line might be the bottom line, but it isn't everything, especially when you factor in the long-term effects of short-term thinking.

Best brawl

Doolittle: There aren't many good brawls anymore. Not that I condone any brawl of any sort. But in the 1960s, Juan Marichal went after John Roseboro with a bat. In the 1970s, Bert Campaneris threw a bat at Lerrin LaGrow, which then spurred Billy Martin to lose his mind. That said, the Jose Bautista-Rougned Odor brouhaha in 2016 was pretty great. What I never have quite understood is just what the heck Kevin Pillar was doing during the fracas. He was obviously mad and he wanted everyone to know he was madder than anybody else. The guy came unhinged. I don't hold it against him.

Miller: Brad is right. But I'll make a different suggestion, anyway. Two, in fact, that are related to each other: The time Brian McCann started one with Jose Fernandez after Fernandez homered; and the time Brian McCann physically blocked the plate after Carlos Gomez homered. I posit that you can trace MLB's Let The Kids Play/We Play Loud campaigns back to those two fights.

In both cases, McCann was dutifully representing the scowly, no-emotions-allowed position that had become, since sometime in the early 1990s, the broadly accepted standard. But in both cases, McCann was clearly and unambiguously the villain, anybody could see it, and he was also the one who was having the least fun. He had made himself look obsolete. Anybody who was against Jose Fernandez's smile in 2013 was obsolete. There's still some hostility out there to shows of celebration on the field, but the league's marketing has chosen its side, and "old-school" now feels merely old. Antiquated.

Bad hot take (our own) of the decade

Miller: On July 4, 2010, after the Giants lost a 15-inning game against the Rockies, falling to 41-40, I was so indignant about a small managerial move -- I think it was not pinch-hitting for Eli Whiteside? -- that I declared it was time to fire Bruce Bochy. The Giants, of course, went 51-30 after that and won three of the next five World Series, and Bochy is probably going to the Hall of Fame for it. Meanwhile, I'm just a very embarrassed guy!

Doolittle: I think I may have said something about Joc Pederson becoming an MVP candidate after his hot start early last April. In my defense, I was specifically asked to provide a hot take, and the way I go about things is specifically designed to avoid anything resembling a hot take. I don't even like the term. Anyway, I meant to say Cody Bellinger. Can we edit that please?

Exec of the decade

Miller: They're all complicated in their own ways, but my first and subsequent thoughts are that it's Chris Antonetti of Cleveland.

Doolittle: In an answer heavily informed by the past few months, I'll go with Dayton Moore. I wish they were all like him.

Best piece of baseball writing of the decade

Miller: Andy McCullough's piece in the LA Times about the Dodgers' GM dominating (and, arguably, ruining) the clubhouse's fantasy football game probably captures the culture of the decade better than any other. The piece I'm most jealous of is Jeff Sullivan's, at SB Nation, about the first alien baseball player. Rob Arthur and Ben Lindbergh breaking the story of the new juiced ball, for FiveThirtyEight in 2016, is among the most prophetic. I was most moved by Rachael McDaniel's Baseball Prospectus article about Doug Ault and the daily fight to feel happiness.

Doolittle: Man, there is just so much to choose from. My favorite book from the decade was Jane Leavy's "The Big Fella." I thought I'd read more than enough about Babe Ruth, but I was wrong. The best baseball book I read during the decade, although it came out in the 1970s, was Pat Jordan's "False Spring." Among shorter-form pieces, I have a lot of affection for Dayn Perry's "The White Sox ballpark in Chicago that never was and could have changed history." It sounds a lot of my chimes in terms of geography and subject matter, but it was also just superbly written. Nice job, Dayn.

Favorite piece of baseball writing, egocentric class

Miller: My favorite actually shows up in the next category, and my second favorite showed up in the Best Trout Season category, so I'll cheat and go with my third choice: My 2018 piece for ESPN The Magazine about what happens to ballplayer bodies (and the rest of our bodies) during the aging process.

Doolittle: I am partial to this piece on Kerry Wood's retirement, which came out of the blue one day when the media showed up for a routine afternoon game at Wrigley Field. It's a long piece, with some good outside voices in it, was unplanned and written in one intense sprint.

Most #ycpb (you can't predict baseball) of the decade

Miller: Philip Humber's perfect game in 2012, a season in which his ERA was over 6.00, near the end of a career that was mostly defined by frustration. I wrote about that day -- and other days in Humber's life -- and what struck me from my conversations with Humber was this: There's nothing unpredictable about a single good pitch, or a single out, or three of those outs in a row for a clean inning. All a perfect game really is is 27 predictable events arranged in an unpredictable, but still perfectly rational, sequence. And the same thing is true of the reverse, of the worst moments in every athlete's life.

Doolittle: The Humber game is a sore subject. I was going to go to the game. I had planned on it, packed my bag, started for the door. Then I changed my mind. So of course he throws a perfect game. And I am now cursed to never see one. Every time I even become conscious of a no-hitter, it disappears like a Snapchat. So ... not to pick on the Yankees, but how do they get out of the decade without a pennant? Yes, I know there was a transition from the Jeter era. But the Yankees still won more games than any other team and never dropped below .500. And they're the Yankees. Of course, now they're mad and just committed a third of a billion to one pitcher, so we'll see how the 2020s work out.

Most unforeseeable change in the decade

Doolittle: Probably the prevalence of shifting. It's not an entirely new concept of course, but I would never have thought it would spread as it has. And if I had known how many extreme shifts we'd be seeing by the end of the decade, I wouldn't have believed it simply because my assumption would be that batters would adjust to them. What makes this change stand out is that the effect is so visceral. You look out on the field and see an entire side of the infield left more or less undefended and it just looks wrong. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to it.

Miller: That gambling on baseball would be legal and -- through partnerships with daily fantasy -- endorsed by the league.

Most enjoyable player

Miller: Andrew McCutchen. There's that old Mitch Hedberg joke: It's hard to dance if you just lost your wallet. ("Whoa! Where's my wallet? But, hey this song is funky.") It's equally hard to feel sad if you're watching Andrew McCutchen in Pittsburgh black and yellow.

Doolittle: You have to like a player who thinks big, and no one thinks bigger than Javy Baez. You can't take your eyes off of him. And that goes for every facet of the game, whether it's mad scrambles around the bases punctuated by reckless dives into the bag, or his signature speed tags, or the out-of-his-shoes swings he always takes. The best part of it is that Baez is really good, so the mistakes he makes with his hyper-aggressiveness are more than wiped out by what he makes happen.

Best player archetypes

Miller: The Zobrist: Position players who break the old utility combos (2B/3B/SS, LF/CF/RF) by playing funky combinations, and who do it not as part-time utility bats but as stars. Ben Zobrist was still an anomaly at the start of this decade, but his success -- he was sixth in the majors in WAR during the first half of the decade, as a second baseman/right fielder/occasionally everywhere else -- begat copycats, and flexibility is now at an all-time high. Last year's standouts: Danny Santana, who hit 28 homers for Texas as a 1B/CF/2B; Ketel Marte, an MVP candidate in Arizona as a CF/SS/2B; Jeff McNeil, a Mets All-Star as a LF/RF/2B/3B; and, of course, the Reds' Michael Lorenzen, who both pitched and played outfield in the same game nine times.

Doolittle: The Gallo: Hitters whose batting average tells you nothing about their offensive value.

Best baseball jargon

Miller: It didn't originate this decade, but it made it into the mainstream this decade: Let it eat. More often used for pitchers -- to throw their hardest -- but applicable anytime a ballplayer uses maximum effort, like swinging for the fences or slamming into the catcher at home. As Michael Baumann wrote, the phrase is a triumph of concision: "Even a one-sentence definition of 'let it eat' takes way longer to say than a three-word, eight-letter idiom that is frequently intelligible even to people who are hearing it for the first time."

Doolittle: I am unsure when most jargon came into common use. For instance, I dig Victor Rojas' "oppo-taco" for opposite-field homers, but it probably precedes the decade. I love "yakker" for a knee-bending curveball, but that goes back decades. The term "walk-off" is a menace and it's gotten out of control this decade, when derivations of it have been deployed as verbs. I never use walk-off in a story, but a couple of times it's ended up in the headline over one of my stories. It makes me very sad. So, too, does it bum me out when the phrase "grind at-bats" is tossed about, as we hear it so often now that it's lost all meaning. Wait, was this supposed to be a positive category?

Best innovation

Doolittle: We've learned more about the nuances that go into differentiating one pitcher from another this decade than any other area of the game. Just in time, too, when it felt like pitching was being reduced to just strikeout and walk rates. Of these, tunneling has been the most fun to learn about. I mean, we knew it existed, but to finally get a sense of what hitters are up against when they have no idea what the ball is doing halfway to the plate has been thrilling. Sometimes it amazes me that hitters ever connect.

Miller: The Play Index at Baseball-Reference, which makes any one of us the world's best baseball researcher.

Worst innovation

Doolittle: Auto-walks, or the no-pitch intentional walk. I know, I should be over it by now. And the impact on competition is almost nil. But it's just such a senseless external intervention into the game on the field. The time savings from the rule is inconsequential. Meanwhile, what you have in its place is an almost obligatory moment of confusion when the on-deck batter heads to first base. Those moments when the visiting team would walk a favorite home player -- drawing robust boos no matter what the situation might be -- are gone. I always enjoyed them. And while wild pitches on intentional balls were exceedingly rare, they happened once in awhile. And managers had to factor in the possibility of a pitcher losing his release point. There is just no good reason to not have that as part of the game. It's a stupid, stupid rule.

Miller: The "call stands" part of the umpire review system. When a manager challenges a call on the field, it can be upheld, reversed, or allowed to "stand," which basically means the umpire watching on a dozen slow-motion replays thinks he knows what happened but isn't certain enough to overturn the call on the field. The whole premise of this system is that a dozen slow-motion replays are better than one set of eyes watching from one angle in real time. If the umpire on the field isn't sure, he still makes a call; the same should be true of the much better informed umpire in Chelsea. There should be no shrugs allowed.

Most hopeful metric

Doolittle: Youth participation in baseball and softball is still on the rise, during a time when getting kids to do anything that doesn't involve a screen has never been more challenging. The numbers are starkly different than they were at the beginning of the decade. What they mean for formal participation in the future, or the future of the fan base, is still unclear. But at a time when we can quibble about a lot of the initiatives that emanate from the league office, this is one area in which it has been proactive, and the future of the sport is brighter because of that.

Miller: Young ballplayers have been dominating the majors for the past few seasons, claiming far more playing time (as a cohort) than they ever had and doing better with that playing time, too. Nothing against older players, but the aging curve almost guarantees that young players will have a more dynamic style of play: They're faster, they tend to swing more, and they play better defense. The past five years have given us the most interesting collection of stars, in my opinion, since the late 1980s and early 1990s: Trout, Betts, Lindor, Bregman, Chapman, Baez, Judge, Yelich, Bellinger, Ohtani, Acuna, Tatis, Soto -- and it's because they're all young enough to still do everything, rather than merely hang out in the batter's box to draw walks and hit homers.

Most alarming metric

Doolittle: The average game lasted three hours, 10 minutes in 2019 -- an all-time record. That happened despite all the attention the issue of game length has gotten in recent years. I love baseball and when I'm at a game -- and I go to more than 100 per season -- I rarely worry about how long it takes. But I recognize that this is a problem when it comes to growing the sport and reversing attendance trends at the big league level. I'm not sure how much the number can be cut; getting it back down to 2:40 or so just doesn't seem reasonable given the leading factors, like the increase of foul balls.

Still, it would be more heartening if the players seemed to understand the issue, and so far, they have not been cooperative with any attempt to tighten up the game. It's driven by self-interest and you can't blame them for that. I'd be the same way. My salary is driven by my production, and if I feel like I need to step out of the batter's box to adjust my jockstrap after every pitch, that's what I'm going to do. But until we get back to the point where pitchers get the ball and throw, and hitters stay in the box, this problem will fester. Pull up any old game of Jim Palmer or Bob Gibson pitching on YouTube; the difference is stunning.

Miller: It's the lack of women employed in the league -- as executives, uniformed coaches, broadcasters, umpires, players. It's dispiriting in the current moment, and it's a problem that feeds itself by signaling to women and girls that they're either unwelcome or facing long odds to break in. But beyond that, I suspect it's an existential threat going forward. It's not hard to imagine a future when we make a cultural decision that spending money for entertainment where women are entirely absent is unacceptable -- that it is simply not good for the culture to celebrate a boys-only club.

Story that defines the decade

Miller: This is only a little bit of an exaggeration: Every story this decade was about either home runs or strikeouts -- either the result of more home runs and strikeouts, or a cause of more home runs and strikeouts. The past four seasons were four of the five highest home run seasons ever (by homers per game), and last season was so far beyond anything before this decade it would be unrecognizable to anybody from last century. Strikeouts went up every year this decade, and the climb isn't slowing -- the jump from 2018 to 2019 was the second biggest jump in at least a century. Last season's leaguewide strikeout rate would have been Bob Gibson's career high, and next season the league average probably will pass nine K's per nine innings pitched. Pace of play is ultimately about home runs and strikeouts, as is attendance, as is the looming collective bargaining fight. Pitcher injuries are ultimately about home runs and strikeouts. Statcast is about home runs and strikeouts, the shift is about home runs and strikeouts, the opener is about home runs and strikeouts, player development is about home runs and strikeouts, Mike Trout is about home runs and strikeouts, catcher framing is about home runs and strikeouts, robo umps are about home runs and strikeouts, and every weird idea you ever have about how to fix baseball is about home runs and strikeouts.

Doolittle: Pitch tracking hit the fast track during the 2000s, with the advent of Pitchf/x. But during the 2010s, comprehensive player tracking accelerated in a way that was pretty shocking. For me, the furtive advances moved into the light with the unveiling of Statcast to the public at the 2014 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. That was the point when pitch tracking -- movement metrics, spin rate, etc. -- and similar initiatives to generate data for hitters and fielders began to enter the mainstream.

The evolution of baseball data remains a work in progress, but these next-level technologies have already changed the game in profound ways, and will continue to do so (for better or worse). Since I was on the NBA beat at the time, I'd lost touch with the newest methods in baseball, so for me that was a revelatory experience. I remember watching the video rollout of it on an enormous screen in a huge auditorium at Sloan and being stunned by things like route efficiency for outfielders. Some of the stuff never even panned out, and Statcast wasn't even installed in every ballpark until the 2015 season.

Still, the processes underpinning baseball changed more during the past decade than at any previous time in the sport's history. For me, that presentation was the inflection point when the new age dawned.

With the January transfer window opening in the new year, several top players will potentially be available in blockbuster moves either then or in the summer. Therefore, Monday is the start of a series on the stars most likely to change clubs. We break down the player's strengths and weaknesses, give you the latest reporting as to their transfer status and also round up the suite of interested teams, including likelihood of a move and where the best fit might be.

First up, Tottenham's playmaker who has been linked with a move all the way back to last January ...

CHRISTIAN ERIKSEN

Age: 27
Position: Attacking Midfield
National Team: Denmark
Previous club: Ajax
Contract expiry: Summer 2020
Career appearances: 462
Goals: 101

SCOUTING REPORT

In 2010, Eriksen was the youngest player at the World Cup for Denmark, and he's been another great success for Ajax's legendary youth academy.

A midfielder with great vision and shooting potential, he is best suited to sitting in between midfield and attack in the No. 10 role, where he can probe for an opening in the opposition defence. The quality of his passing marks him out among the best in the Premier League, but he also has a tendency to drift out of the big games.

Former boss Martin Jol said of Eriksen: "For me, you can compare him with special players like [Kevin] De Bruyne or David Silva. This type of player who is capable to play football and run and fight. That is a massive, massive value to have a player like Christian on the team."

JANUARY MARKET VALUE: €45m (£40m)

According to Transfermarkt, Eriksen was valued at €100 million in the summer, but no club came in for him, and that value has plummeted with his contract running out in just over six months' time. Europe's elite can begin contract talks with the midfielder on Jan. 1 with a view to signing him on a free transfer in 2020, but they'll have to pay if they want him this window.

SOURCES TELL ESPN FC: Having told Spurs he would not be extending his contract, sources said the former Ajax playmaker is interested only in moving to the two Spanish giants, Real Madrid or Barcelona, or, as a third choice, Juventus. Sources in Italy said Inter Milan are also monitoring the situation.

FRONT-RUNNERS

REAL MADRID

Can you ever have too many playmakers? Real Madrid already have Luka Modric, Isco, James Rodriguez and Toni Kroos in Zinedine Zidane's squad, but that hasn't stopped the club from looking closely at Eriksen. Madrid have been admirers of the Dane for some time, and the imminent end of his contract makes a move more feasible than ever.

There is one problem: Sources have told ESPN FC that while senior figures at Real Madrid view Eriksen as a market opportunity worth taking, Zidane himself is not so sure and instead wants Paul Pogba from Manchester United. The French coach has pointedly not ruled out adding to his squad in January -- "Anything can happen in football," he said recently -- but he generally prefers not to make midseason additions.

It is not immediately clear where Eriksen would fit into either of Zidane's preferred systems, his 4-3-3 or 4-4-2. In the forward line, Eden Hazard should return soon from injury, Gareth Bale remains at the club and young Brazilians Vinicius Jr. and Rodrygo have been getting plenty of minutes. In midfield, there is even more competition, as listed above.

In Eriksen's favour is Real Madrid's persistent goal problem this year. While never prolific, his career-best 10 league goals in a season (a figure achieved twice at Tottenham) would likely see him end this campaign Madrid's second-highest scorer, behind Karim Benzema.

A Madrid squad seemingly packed with attacking talent has been struggling to find the back of the net, with back-to-back 0-0 draws in the last two games of 2019. Adding another creative player wouldn't hurt ... if Zidane can be convinced to give the move the green light. -- Alex Kirkland.

Transfer Rating: 7/10

BARCELONA

A midfield revolution is underway at Camp Nou. It started with the arrival of Frankie de Jong in the summer and will continue with more signings in the coming years. Sergio Busquets, Arturo Vidal and Ivan Rakitic are all the wrong side of 30, while the latter two may not last beyond the summer.

If a player such as Eriksen is available for free, then he has to be considered by the club. The midfielder's touch, technique and vision would fit the club's style perfectly. There are even people at Barca who felt he should have been pursued ahead of Philippe Coutinho two years ago.

The argument against signing Eriksen would be that it would be another hammer blow to the youngsters trying to make the grade. Carles Alena has just joined Real Betis until the end of the season, and Riqui Puig can't get out of the B team. But there could be room for everyone. What about a pool of Busquets, De Jong, Alena, Puig, Arthur Melo and Eriksen next season? -- Sam Marsden

Transfer Rating: 6/10

JUVENTUS

It has all the hallmarks of a classic Juventus signing: Another high-profile free transfer to add to a long illustrious list. Moving to Turin in many ways makes sense for Eriksen as Maurizio Sarri has settled on a 4-4-2 diamond with a No. 10 behind a pair of strikers. He'd get to play in his favourite position and follow in the footsteps of another great Dane in Michael Laudrup. But for Miralem Pjanic and Rodrigo Bentancur, Juventus' midfield lacks the one-touch agility associated with vintage Sarrismo.

The issue is Juventus are not short of players in the No. 10 role with Aaron Ramsey, Federico Bernardeschi, Paulo Dybala, Bentancur and Douglas Costa all taking turns in that position. In fact, Juve are not short in any position, perhaps with the exception of centre-forward and full-back, which is why the priority of the January transfer window is thinning out a massive squad. Very unlikely in January, but come back to us in the summer, when there are more obvious squad holes to fill. -- James Horncastle

Transfer Rating: 4/10

INTER MILAN

As with Juventus, rivals Inter are aware of the opportunity presented by Eriksen, and sources said they are the keener of the two clubs. After the defeat to Borussia Dortmund, Antonio Conte made it clear the squad requires reinforcement and, while there is no obvious position for Eriksen in his 3-5-2 set-up, the Dane would be asked to fulfill a similar role to Stefano Sensi, pushing up between the lines in support of Inter's strikers.

But they are unlikely to pay a fee now, given that Eriksen is free come the end of June. Alexis Sanchez is due back from injury, and Inter will push to acquire a back-up for Romelu Lukaku -- swapping Matteo Politano for Fernando Llorente is on the cards. For now, the priority is to reunite Conte with Arturo Vidal and add depth to the wing-back position, with Matteo Darmian expected to join from Parma. -- James Horncastle

Transfer Rating: 5/10

OUTSIDE BET

MANCHESTER UNITED

Man United were briefly interested in signing Eriksen in the summer, but it never went any further than that.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is short in midfield, and he could do with a player who can find a way through compact, organised defences. United are good on the break but struggle in games in which they dominate possession, and Eriksen would fit the bill, although sources have told ESPN FC that Leicester's James Maddison is United's top target.

At 23, Maddison is four years younger, but Eriksen's contract situation at Tottenham is hard for United to ignore. Leicester are likely to demand upward of £60m for Maddison, while Eriksen is free if they can persuade him to stay in the Premier League and join a rival club. -- Rob Dawson

Transfer Rating: 3/10

IT WOULD BE FUNNY IF ...

ARSENAL

Eriksen would be mad to pull a Sol Campbell, but stranger things have happened in football. If Mikel Arteta decides that Mesut Ozil has had enough chances to shine, there will be a vacancy for a class No. 10 in the side.

Undoubtedly, he would improve Arsenal's attacking threat in the final third, but the north London ties will be too much for either club or player to consider it. If Mauricio Pochettino had landed the Emirates job after Unai Emery was sacked, then it could have been a different story, but there's no chance now. -- Jonathan Molyneux-Carter

Transfer Rating: 0/10

... BUT WOULD HE STAY?

TOTTENHAM

Eriksen's stats so far this season -- seven Premier League starts and eight appearances from the bench -- highlight how it would probably have been best for all parties had the Danish midfielder moved on during the summer.

He has simply not contributed to anything like the levels he is capable of, but with six months to run on his contract, there is still time for Eriksen to redeem himself and benefit Spurs, too.

If he can rediscover his best form, the 27-year-old will increase his chances of getting a move to an elite Europe club -- right now, those prospects have taken a battering -- and he will also help Jose Mourinho's bid to haul the team into the top four. But he won't stay beyond the summer. -- Mark Ogden

Transfer Rating: 1/10

A career-best fourth position for Marnus Labuschagne and a move up to No. 10 for Quinton de Kock were the headlines of the year-end ICC rankings for men's batting in Test cricket. India captain Virat Kohli stayed on top of the list - for 274 days in 2019 - with second-placed Steven Smith, who was the No. 1 batsman for 91 days earlier in the year, behind him.

Labuschagne's scores of 63 and 19 in Australia's 247-run win against New Zealand in Melbourne pushed him up by one slot from No. 5. He began the year ranked 110th, with only two Tests against his name, but was prolific in his 11 outings in the format since, making 1104 runs in 17 innings at an average of 64.94.

Wicketkeeper-batsman de Kock, meanwhile, advanced eighth places to get in the top ten following his Player-of-the-Match contribution, with scores of 95 and 34, in South Africa's 107-run victory in the series-opener against England in Centurion.

Australia fast bowler Pat Cummins retained his spot atop the bowler's rankings in Tests following his first-innings five-wicket haul in Melbourne. He has occupied the top position for 322 days this year, while South Africa pacer Kagiso Rabada, who was No. 1 for 44 days after starting 2019 in top position, finished the year at No. 3.

Replacing Rabada in the second spot was New Zealand quick Neil Wagner, who climbed one position on the back of his seven-wicket match haul in Melbourne. The retiring Vernon Philander advanced three positions up to No. 5 to complete the top five on the bowlers' rankings alongside the fourth-placed Jason Holder, who continued to lead the allrounders' rankings in Tests. Save for the fifth-placed R Ashwin, who climbed up one spot, the top five allrounders in Tests - Ravindra Jadeja, Ben Stokes and Philander the others - retained their spots.

As far as team rankings for the World Test Championship (WTC) go, Australia consolidated their position in second place of the points table. They added 40 points from their win in Melbourne to take their tally to 256 points from nine games. Top-placed India are 104 points clear of Australia while South Africa collected 30 points after their first win in the WTC and trail New Zealand and England, who occupied the fifth and sixth positions with 60 and 56 points respectively.

Spare a thought for holiday-makers catching a flight to Cape Town from Johannesburg on New Year's Eve.

For there is a fair chance some of them will be sharing a plane with an England squad so sickly that they should probably be led by a hooded figure ringing a mournful warning bell.

News that Dom Sibley, the opening batsman, is the latest to succumb to the illness means that 17 members* of the touring party - including backroom staff - have been ill at some stage. The England management remain keen not to use the episode as an excuse for the lacklustre performance in Centurion - and, to be fair, it wasn't as if it was the only lacklustre performance of the year - but there is no doubt it has hampered them.

Although the news about Sibley is a setback, there is some optimism within the camp that they are, at last, coming to the end of the saga. But although most of those previously affected are now back in training, it will take some time to regain the fitness and stamina levels they had before. And in these temperatures - and at these altitudes - that is a real issue.

There has been some encouraging news. Jack Leach, who spent time in hospital in New Zealand after sustaining gastroenteritis, is out of quarantine and will travel with the rest of the squad to Cape Town. It remains unlikely he will be considered fit for the second Test, however, as he has hardly bowled a ball for a month. Dom Bess and Matt Parkinson are vying for a spot in his place. At present, it seems Bess is ahead in that race.

It may make sense to consider contingency plans. Although the team management are adamant they do not require further reinforcements - they do have 19 men here, after all - it may be worth asking Gareth Batty, the Surrey offspinner, to attend nets over the next few days.

Batty is currently here in his role as part of the talkSPORT commentary team and was deemed good enough for a Test spot as recently as November 2016. He remains, aged 42, a first-class player with Surrey - he played eight Championship games in 2019, twice as many as Parkinson did - and could, perhaps, provide some assurance should Bess and Parkinson also fall ill in the coming days. Batty recorded his best first-class figures - 8 for 64 - in May. England could do much, much worse.

While it's too early to rule Sibley out of contention for Cape Town, his illness could provide opportunity for Zak Crawley to come in as an opening batsman. Equally, it could provide a reprieve for Jonny Bairstow, who looks set otherwise to make way for the returning Ollie Pope. While inexperienced, Crawley does have an excellent reputation for his ability to play quick bowling. Chris Woakes is also out of quarantine and understood to be on the mend.

If England do elect to play a spinner at Cape Town - that is not certain; South Africa did not pick one in their last Test on the ground and Pakistan's spinner, Yasir Shah, finished wicketless - it will leave them with a tricky decision over which seamer to leave out.

Sam Curran, who was probably the pick of bowlers in the first innings in Centurion and offers more than most with the bat, could consider himself unfortunate to be left out, while Jofra Archer, despite proving expensive, proved his value with a five-wicket haul in England's second innings.

That would leave England needing to decide between the two leading wicket-takers in their Test history: James Anderson and Stuart Broad. Both may feel they have come on for the run-out in the first Test; Broad was clearly suffering the after effects of illness and Anderson was playing his first game since the start of August. It's the sort of decision that could leave the management feeling sick.

*Who has suffered from Plague White/Ian Rubella/Darren Whooping-Gough/Gladstone Smallpox (That's enough. Ed) so far:
Players: Jofra Archer, Stuart Broad, Jos Buttler, Joe Denly, Jack Leach, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Dom Sibley, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood
Non-players: Carl Hopkinson (fielding coach), Graham Thorpe (batting coach), Sam Dickason (security manager), Greg Stobart (digital manager) and two local liaison officers (one in Benoni and one in Centurion)

Many athletes end the year with PBs as 12 men go sub-30:00 and nine women dip inside 35 minutes in Clitheroe

Ribble Valley 10km, Clitheroe, December 29

Marc Scott and Jess Judd were among the athletes to end their year on a high as they claimed 10km road race victories at an event which also incorporates the North of England 10km Championships.

Scott retained his title in a PB and course record of 28:32 to place him joint fourth in this year’s UK rankings, while Judd also ran a personal best of 32:17 (32:20 gun time) to move into the top 20 on the UK all-time list and sixth on the 2019 rankings. Judd had clocked 32:11 at the Age UK Leeds Abbey Dash in October but that course was later found to be 23 metres short.

Behind Scott, triathlete Ben Dijkstra and 1500m specialist Charlie Da’Vall Grice also finished inside the previous course record, clocking 28:53 and 28:55 respectively as a total of 12 men dipped inside 30 minutes.

Also among them was 18-year-old Joshua Cowperthwaite who clocked 29:37 (29:36 chip time) in sixth to just miss the British under-20 best of 29:35 set in 1991.

Judd led a total of nine women inside 35 minutes, with Rachael Franklin second in 33:24 and Holly Archer third in 33:27.

Corrida de Houilles 10km, France, December 29

Daniel Simiu Ebenyo and Norah Jeruto broke the course records to claim a Kenyan double, clocking respective times of 27:12 and 30:32.

Ethiopia’s Haftu Teklu and France’s Jimmy Gressier ran the same time of 27:43 in second and third, which is a European lead by Gressier, while the women’s race runner-up was Ethiopia’s Nigsti Haftu Tesfay in 30:52 ahead of her compatriot Gete Alemayehu in 31:08. Liv Westphal finished fourth in a French record of 31:15.

Britain’s Phil Sesemann ran a PB of 28:26 to place eighth, while Emile Cairess (28:39), Ben Connor (28:40), Josh Griffiths (28:42) and Kieran Clements (28:54) also finished inside 29 minutes.

Charlotte Taylor-Green was 22nd in the women’s race in 35:25.

San Silvestre de Lisboa 10km, Portugal, December 28

Spain’s Adel Mechaal won the men’s race in 29:08 ahead of Portugal’s Samuel Barata in 29:09, while Jessica Augusto clocked 33:09 to win the women’s race ahead of Ana Dulce Felix in 33:51 in a Portuguese one-two.

Clevedon AC Boxing Day Races, North Somerset, December 26

Triathlete and duathlete Emma Pallant won the women’s four-mile race in 23:07 ahead of Stephanie Barnes (23:16) and Jenny Spink (23:19).

Felix McGrath won the men’s race in 20:51 ahead of Andrew Chambers (21:02) and James Rodgers (21:35).

D'Arcy Short has been called up for Australia's short ODI series in India in January after Sean Abbott, the fast-bowling allrounder, sustained a "moderate side strain", Cricket Australia announced.

Abbott picked up the injury during Saturday's Sydney derby at the SCG between Sydney Sixers, the team he represents, and Sydney Thunder. He impressed in that outing, picking up 2 for 28 in a high-scoring game that Sixers eventually won in the one-over eliminator.

"It is extremely unfortunate for Sean, who is very much a part of our white-ball squad plans leading into the ICC T20 World Cup and the World Cup," Trevor Hohns said in a CA statement. "D'Arcy offers the squad another spinning all-rounder option along with Ashton Agar, which, along with the four world-class fast bowlers and Adam Zampa, balances the squad out nicely.

"His proven record and ability to bat anywhere in the order will also be a great asset to the squad."

Abbott, whose only ODI appearance came in 2014, is expected to be sidelined for three to four weeks.

Short, meanwhile, has so far struck two half-centuries in three BBL innings this season for Hobart Hurricanes. He has made 120 runs overall at a strike rate of 127.65. He has played four ODIs, the last of them in November 2018, as well as 20 T20Is.

The first India v Australia ODI will be played in Mumbai on January 14, followed by matches in Rajkot (January 17) and Bengaluru (January 19).

LOS ANGELES -- Anthony Davis said there's a simple solution to keeping the Los Angeles Lakers atop the league standings: lockdown defense.

"We just had to find ourselves again," Davis said after the Lakers' 108-95 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday at Staples Center. "We were able to get back to what we do defensively. And when we do that, we're able to beat any team and feel good about ourselves."

It wasn't just any team they were putting the clamps on, either.

The Mavs own the NBA's No. 1 offense in terms of efficiency, and L.A. was able to hold them to a season-low 95 points on 36% shooting (30.2% from 3) while causing Dallas to commit 19 turnovers.

"Just a bad night for us," Mavs star Luka Doncic said. "Really bad night."

The Lakers harassed Doncic, considered a top-five MVP candidate, into a 5-for-14 shooting night with six turnovers. According to research by ESPN Stats & Information, all of Doncic's 14 attempts were contested. He shot just 1-for-6 with Avery Bradley guarding him, none of his attempts came off a pass and only one of his shots were attempted in transition.

"Every night, we want to dismantle teams defensively," former three-time Defensive Player of the Year winner Dwight Howard said. "I think we have the talent, the willpower to do that. Every night, we dismantle teams on the defensive end."

The Lakers head into 2020 having won two games straight to put their season-long, four-game losing streak behind them. At 26-7, they have the best record in the Western Conference.

Part of their defensive success Sunday was because of L.A. coach Frank Vogel's decision to experiment with zone coverage for the first time all season.

"Facing the No. 1 offensive team in the league by a large margin, sometimes you got to junk the game a little bit, throw them just a different look," Vogel said. "Teams do it to us, and usually we end up prevailing, but it can just change the game up a little bit. I presented it to our team as an option, 'How do you guys feel about it?' And guys liked the idea, and I think it was pretty effective tonight."

It resulted in the Mavs scoring 46 fewer points Sunday than they did Saturday on the first night of their back-to-back in Golden State.

"I think it kind of messed them up a little bit; they tried different sets with [Kristaps] Porzingis and Luka, and it kind of disrupted them a little bit and taken them out of their offense," Davis said.

The win was an early birthday present for LeBron James (13 points, 13 assists), who became the first player in league history to register 9,000 assists, 9,000 rebounds and 30,000 points.

James will turn 35 Monday on the team's off day. L.A. next plays Wednesday at home against the Phoenix Suns.

"The milestone of it is when you grow up in the inner city around a lot of things that you don't want your kids to see, to be able to get to this point in age where the statistics is stacked up against you for obvious reasons, that's a blessing," James said. "It's more of a blessing for me to be able to do what I love to do every day and be able to let me family reap the benefits of that, and they allow me to be an inspiration to them. That is really cool."

What wasn't as cool, James said, was that he was going into his own pockets for his birthday wish.

"I don't wish to have a party because I got to pay for it," he said, leaning back in his chair with a smile on his face. "S---, I got to pay for my own damn birthday party."

Pieter Malan is set to become South Africa's eighth Test debutant in five matches during the New Year's Test. Malan will replace the injured Aiden Markram, who has been ruled out of the series with a fractured finger, according to South Africa's head coach Mark Boucher, who is on the selection panel.

Boucher, assistant coach Enoch Nkwe, captain Faf du Plessis and independent selector Linda Zondi pick the starting XI and, speaking in the wake of South Africa's 107-run win in the first Test at Centurion, Boucher indicated Malan is the favourite to step into Markram's role in Cape Town next week.

"Pieter Malan was selected in the squad. For us to go messing around with the opening position wouldn't be clever," Boucher said. "Pieter Malan has done a lot of good work over a long period of time. It's his home ground. At the moment, we are swinging towards having a straight swap for the opening batsman."

Malan has a first-class average of 45.16, has scored a century for the Cobras and two for Western Province this summer, and was included in the original 16-man squad for the first two Tests against England. He did not play the opening match but when Markram was injured, he was considered the next man in.

However, after South Africa fielded a team that included only one black African and three other players of colour in the first Test, missing their transformation target by two, the apparent straightforwardness of Malan's selection became more complicated.

More so, now that Keegan Petersen, a No.3 and a player of colour, has been added to the squad. There was some suggestion that Rassie van der Dussen would be promoted to open the batting to make room for Temba Bavuma lower down the order, as a way for South Africa to get closer to the target of two black African players and four other players of colour. But Boucher suggested that they may fall short again because Bavuma, who is recovering from a hip injury, may not be fit.

ALSO READ: South Africa embrace struggle to re-embark on road to success

"There are challenges because we have got a few injuries," Boucher said. "Temba still felt pain in his side yesterday, otherwise we were thinking about using him as a catcher because Temba is a very good fielder." Instead, Rudi Second stepped in for Markram in the field, and came close to running out Rory Burns with some sharp reactions at short leg.

Even if Bavuma was fit, Boucher hinted that he would not have a free pass back into the XI, because of van der Dussen's debut performance. He scored a half-century in South Africa's second innings and was part of a match-winning fifth-wicket stand of 91 with Anrich Nortje. "It will be tough to leave a guy like Rassie out," Boucher said.

However, Boucher also threw his support behind Bavuma and acknowledged that he will need to be nurtured as he makes his way back from injury.

"I understand Temba has been under pressure. I don't want to throw him to the wolves. Temba is very good and we will work with him," Boucher said.

Without Bavuma in the side, South Africa's new management will come under even more pressure for their missed targets, especially after accusations in recent days, from the Black African Cricket Clubs (BACC), that the structure is controlled by white men.

Boucher acknowledged that there is work to be done in that department and reaffirmed his commitment to change.

"We understand transformation and we understand we need to do a lot of hard work on a lot of players, especially allrounders," Boucher said. "That's why Andile [Phehlukwayo] is in the squad."

Both Boucher and du Plessis have made it clear that Phehlukwayo is being mentored to fill an allrounders' role in the future, though he will have to bide his time behind Pretorius for now.

All that said, Boucher will be relieved that the regular black African player in the squad, Kagiso Rabada, has found form after a year in which he struggled.

Rabada's seven wickets at Centurion, including four on the final afternoon, added up to his best haul of the year and was the result of giving him the freedom to cut loose.

"It's just about getting him into the game," said Boucher. "Sometimes as an individual you worry about your action, where are you putting the ball. Sometimes you just need to forget about your technique or where you are putting the ball and get into a bit of a fight out there. The goal was to try and get him into the game and get his natural instincts to take over."

Four-day Test matches could become mandatory as part of the World Test Championship from 2023, with the ICC's cricket committee likely to formally consider the change in 2020 amid widespread discussions among member boards about how to reduce numerous pressure points in the global cricket calendar for the future.

However, the world's cricketers stand as the most likely source of opposition to the change, with many viewing the step up from four-day first-class games to five-day Tests as a critical point of difference at the top end of the long-form game.

The ICC's increasing demand for event windows, the proliferation of domestic T20 leagues, the BCCI's demands for its own sizeable share of bilateral calendar space, and the costs of staging Test series are all factors contributing to the move, which would shave off a significant amount of time from the calendar for the 2023 to 2031 cycle.

As an example, mandatory four-day Test matches rather than five-day matches during the current cycle from 2015 to 2023 would have freed up a total of 335 days of scheduled cricket over the period, a valuable amount of time that would also be enhanced by the ability to consistently schedule Test matches on a Thursday-to-Sunday basis, not dissimilar to the rhythm of golf tournaments on the world's major professional tours.

ALSO READ: One day too many? Early finishes point to new possibilities for Test cricket

It would also allow for more Test series to played over three or five matches, affording host boards and broadcasters a greater share of the higher revenue-raising early days of a Test without having to budget for a fifth day. Australia's recent history against India has seen Test series played over four matches for a total of 20 scheduled days - the same number that would be scheduled for a five-match series of four-day Tests.

Matches played over four days would likely see the increase of the minimum overs in a day from 90 to 98, meaning that over four days only 58 scheduled overs would be lost. There has been an increasing proliferation in the number of Test matches finishing inside four days - more than 60% of matches played since the start of 2018 have ended in four days or fewer.

"It is something that we have got to seriously consider," Cricket Australia chief executive Kevin Roberts told SEN Radio this week. "It is something that can't be driven by emotion, but it needs to be driven by fact. We need to look at what's the average length of Test matches over the past five-ten years in terms of time and overs.

"We need to look at it very carefully and perhaps it is more likely than not in the mid-term future. What we absolutely will do is that over the next 12 to 18 months, is make sure the cricket calendar is nailed down for the years 2023 to 2031. What we are committed to doing is working with all the ICC members - nobody is saying it is easy but what we are doing is looking at it holistically and we are committed to doing that."

The contrasting view, shared among many players, was provided by Australia captain Tim Paine at the conclusion of Australia's 247-run victory over New Zealand in Melbourne. "We might not have got a result if we'd done that in the Ashes, I think every game went to a fifth day," he said. "That's the point of difference with Test cricket, it is five days, it's harder mentally, it's harder physically, and it tests players more than the four-day first-class fixtures do. I think that's what it's designed to do, so I hope it stays that way."

A shift to four-day Tests would place an even greater premium on the quality of pitches around the world, with curators being required to provide a surface that aids pace bowlers, batsmen and spin bowlers over their course, without the chance of an extra day for the pitch to deteriorate over. It would likely also force captains to think more in terms of scoring rates and declarations to create enough time to bowl opposition teams put in the reduced time available.

Tony Irish, the head of the international players' body FICA, said that while four-day Tests would provide a solution to many of the game's growing problems around squeezing cricket's three formats into the global calendar, such a move could not be made without an integrated approach to scheduling and a far more "coherent" structure for the international game.

"There are two aspects to four-day Tests, the cricket aspect and the scheduling aspect," Irish told ESPNcricinfo. "It would take pressure off the schedule but our concern would be that the ad hoc way the schedule currently works they would simply plug in more cricket into the gaps. If introduced it therefore has to be part of a more coherent structure.

"We would need to understand exactly how the cricket aspects are intended to work and we would need to take that to the players. In the past, many players have been against a change to four days. However if we have a clear picture of how it all works in an improved and well-structured schedule, then it would be something that could be taken to the players for their consideration.

"Unfortunately with the ICC there is a history of introducing these types of changes in an unstructured way and that would need to change. We reckon they need to do a lot of work on how the schedule will look and not just present it as a concept."

Four-day Tests have already been added to the calendar in a limited form, for matches such as a Test between South Africa and Zimbabwe, and then England hosting Ireland earlier this year. Australia will likely play its first four-day Test against Afghanistan at home next summer.