Basketball
- Miami Heat defeat the Dallas Mavericks in 6 games in the NBA Finals series for Miami's first-ever NBA World Championship. Finals MVP Dwyane Wade rallied four consecutive 35-point games to come back from a two games to none deficit and win four straight.
- University of Florida wins its first ever NCAA title, defeating UCLA 73–57. George Mason, an 11 seed, makes it to the final four
- University of Maryland wins its first ever NCAA women's title, defeating Duke 77–75 in overtime.
- January 22 – Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant scores 81 points in a win over the Toronto Raptors, becoming only the second player in league history to score at least 80 points in one game. It was the second highest individual point total in NBA history (Second only to Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point performance).
- Chinese Basketball Association – Guangdong Southern Tigers defeat Bayi Rockets (4–1) in finals.
- National Basketball League (Australia) – Melbourne Tigers defeat the Sydney Kings 3–0 in best-of-five final series
- Euroleague – Russian power CSKA Moscow dethrones the two-time defending Euroleague champions Maccabi Tel Aviv (Israel) 73–69 at Sazka Arena in Prague. This is CSKA's fifth title in the competition, but first since 1971. Third place goes to TAU Cerámica, which defeated FC Barcelona 87–82 in an all-Spanish affair.
- The Detroit Shock stunned the 2005 WNBA Champion Sacramento Monarchs in 5 games in the 2006 WNBA Finals.
Read more about this topic: 2006 In Sports
Famous quotes containing the word basketball:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)