BY WEB STAFF
sportsnet.ca

As another decade of sports ticks down, sportsnet.ca looks at the athletes, scandals and games that defined the past 10 years. Today we present a mix of the 10 sporting studs & duds that fans will never forget.

Over the next week sportsnet.ca will revisit the decade's best games, odds stories, studs & duds, players to watch over the next 10 years and finish up with the 10 top stories -- one per year -- from the first decade of the 21st century.

As always, we encourage your debate at the bottom of the page.

Enjoy.

STUD: Albert Pujols

It’s hard to imagine a baseball player having a better decade than the one Albert Pujols just enjoyed. The three-time NL MVP burst on to the scene in 2001 by capturing the NL Rookie of the Year Award after batting .329 with 37 home runs and 130 RBI.

Incredibly, the Cardinals slugger improved on those numbers over the next eight seasons averaging a .334 batting average with 42 home runs and 129 RBI. Add in six post-season appearances and a World Series title in 2006 and you have as close to a perfect decade as possible.

STUD: Tiger Woods

Whenever and wherever he returns to golf, even Tiger Woods will have a hard time duplicating the numbers he put up over the past 10 years.

In 2000 he won the U.S. Open by 15 strokes, the British Open by eight and the PGA Championship in a playoff. The three Major titles is considered by many to be the greatest single season in golf’s history.

The rest of the decade wasn’t bad either; Woods added nine more majors to his resume -- leaving him just four behind Jack Nicklaus’ all-time record of 18.

Little did anyone know it at the time, but when 19-year-old Roger Federer beat four-time defending Wimbledon champion Pete Sampras in the quarter-finals of the 2001 tournament it represented a titanic shift in men's tennis.

Beginning with his first Wimbledon title in 2003, it would take Federer just seven years to catch and surpass Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slam titles. It took Sampras 12 years to establish the mark.

The man many consider to be the greatest player of all-time has appeared in an unprecedented 21 career Grand Slam finals, and has reached the semi-finals or better of the past 22 Grand Slam tournaments.

DUD: Jacques Villeneuve

Following his Formula One World Championship in 1997, it looked like Jacques Villeneuve was on his way to becoming one of the greatest drivers in open wheel history. But in 1999, Villeneuve made a fatal mistake by leaving perennial championship contenders Team Williams for the newly-founded British American Racing (BAR) team, co-founded and partly owned by his personal manager, Craig Pollock.

As impossible as it sounds Villeneuve’s last F1 podium finish in a race came at the 2001 German GP.

By 2004, he had sunk so far that he was forced to take a sabbatical after no one offered him a contract. Villeneuve still gives hints that he might return to F1 someday, but in 2009 he managed to compete in just two NASCAR Nationwide Series races.

DUD: Isiah Thomas

The decade began well for Thomas with his induction to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000. It was all downhill from there.

As President of Basketball Operations for the New York Knicks (later general manager and coach) Thomas dealt lottery picks for underachievers (Eddy Curry), hired and fired Larry Brown, and he cost his employers an $11.6 million settlement following a sexual harassment charge brought against him by a former employee.

In his final season with the Knicks, Thomas coached the team to a franchise-worst 59 losses. On October 24, 2008 Thomas was taken to hospital following an accidental drug overdose. According to police, Thomas tried to cover-up the incident by saying it was his 17-year-old daughter who required medical attention.

STUD: Tom Brady

The decade began with Tom Brady being an afterthought in 2000 NFL draft as the New England Patriots selected him in the sixth round, 199th overall.

The next year he took over the starting QB duties following an injury to Drew Bledsoe and led the Patriots to a huge upset victory over the 14-point favourite St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, becoming the youngest man to QB a Super Bowl champion.

Two more Super Bowl wins would follow (’03, ’04) to go along with a league MVP (2007), the all-time single-season TD passing record (50) and an argument as the greatest of this generation.

DUD: Mike Keenan

When Mike Keenan lifted the Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers in 1994, who would have guessed that over the ensuing 15 years his teams would fail to get as far as the Conference Final?

Keenan is currently fourth on the NHL’s coaches win list with 648, but you wouldn’t know it based on his track record this past decade.

Stops in Boston and Florida failed to yield a single playoff appearance and his recent two-year stint with the Calgary Flames ended with consecutive first-round exits.

To make matters worse for Iron Mike, he was GM of the Panthers when they pulled the trigger on the trade that sent Roberto Luongo to Vancouver in exchange for Alex Auld and Todd Bertuzzi.

STUD: Lance Armstrong

Love him or loathe him, Lance Armstrong’s seven-straight Tour de France titles from 1999-2005 is an incredible feat.

In 2002, Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year and he took home the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year award from 2002–2005. Also down south, ESPN Awarded him with the Best Male Athlete in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006.

Following years of allegations surrounding suspected steroid use, Armstrong returned to the Tour de France in 2009 but finished in third place overall, 5:24 behind the overall winner, posting his team-tested blood results online for all to see.

DUD: Ken Griffey Jr.

During the 1990s, while a member of the Seattle Mariners, Ken Griffey Jr. won nine Gold Gloves, was the 1997 AL MVP and he made the playoffs twice. But in 1999, tired of near-misses with the Mariners and looking to move closer to his Florida home, Seattle grated Junior his request for a trade by sending him to Cincinnati.

Now, whether he upset the baseball gods or not by requesting the trade, the past decade has been marred with injuries and rapidly declining performance.

While he once looked like a potential future home run champion, Griffey will now have to "settle" for a first-ballot Hall of Fame induction.

DUD: Gary Bettman

Under his watch, Gary Bettman has seen NHL revenues rise from $400 million to over $2.2 billion in 2006–07 and the number of teams grow from 24 to 30.

With numbers like that, you’d think his tenure as NHL commission has been a smashing success. But the 2004–05 NHL lockout that saw the entire season canceled, his failure to secure a national U.S. television deal, the farce that is the Phoenix Coyotes ownership situation and several other franchises reportedly in financial distress arguably has the perception of the NHL as a business and a sports league, at an all-time low.