On March 15, 2020, in the hallowed pages of the New York Times, I published one of the dumbest things I’ve ever written. (And there are many contenders for that title.) Four days after that fateful March 11 night when the NBA shut down, then-President Trump made his sniffly, error-filled, and super-not-reassuring Oval Office speech about COVID-19, and we all learned that Tom Hanks was sick, I (and others, it should be said) worried that sports themselves might be in some sort of existential peril.