While We're Young Ideas

By TERRY LYONS

BOSTON – These are the most important things in modern-day life in these United States.

1. Health
2. Family (and their health and safety)
3. Shelter
4. Friends and Good Neighbors
5. Time
6. Happiness
7. Ambition and vision
8. Fulfilling or rewarding work
9. Money
10. Luck

For the sake of this column, let’s assume nine of the 10 things listed are correct and each person can order them in any fashion they’d prefer. In some cases, the list may vary depending on a persons’ current situation and circumstances and where they were born and live. In other cases, the list and its order can change from day-to-day.

Of course, if one is born into poverty in the USA or many foreign lands and “third world” countries, all bets are off.

There are a few things on my list that don’t change for anyone on this earth. One of them is TIME.

Many of the sporting games we play and spectate are measured by time. Some are not.

Those measured by time, include:

1. Football
2. Futbol (and they hide the damn clock)
3. Basketball
4. Ice Hockey
5. Lacrosse
6. Many of the Olympic sports like swimming and downhill skiing
7. You get the picture!

Other popular sports are not measured by time and, theoretically, you could play a single game forever and ever and ever. They include:

1. Baseball
2. Golf
3. Tennis
4. Just to name a few!

The past year (almost to the date of this column) taught us about the concept of time. The value of time was taught suddenly and with significant impact, probably more than any of the years of our lifetimes. For many, time was lost, along with jobs, money, happiness and other things we might’ve previously taken for granted.

The profound question and uncertainty?

How much TIME do we have? And, that is so over our full lifetime or in the case of athletics, maybe just over a relatively short career-length.

How do we manage TIME? What do we prioritize in our daily lives?

To start off the terrible Year of 2020, on January 1 – nonetheless – NBA Commissioner David Stern passed away. His time had come and so many were deeply effected by his incredible life and sudden death after suffering a brain hemorrhage in mid-December, 2019. During his time on this earth, in the words of longtime NBA front office guru and current President of the Golden State Warriors Rick Welts said Stern and his loyal staff pulled off the Sisyphus Act of all-time by pushing the giant boulder of the NBA uphill in very difficult times. The difference in that period of TIME, unlike Sisyphus, for the most part the rise of the NBA to its global prominence in sport was a joy-ride of hard work with th benefit of watching GREAT basketball, working with terrific people and having fun while we did it.

Stern was a master of TIME and enjoyed his career at the NBA so much that he named his post NBA private investment company, MicroManagement Ventures. It was a wonderful joke made together with his lawyerly friends put it underlined one of his own management mantras. “Everything is a priority.”

Stern’s passing was a sign of the time to come, although none of us quite understood it on January 1, 2020 or even at his service, held at Radio City Music Hall on January 21st. We were about to endure a year of crisis, botched crisis management, and then a full shutdown.

TIME would tell and the world and the sports industry pushed onward.

It started with a terrible game of televised and remotely produced H-O-R-S-E, then a golf tournament, called “The Match,” played in driving rain with Peyton Manning and Tiger Woods joining up with Phil Mickelson and former New England Patriots QB Tom Brady. After he struggled through his round of televised golf, who knew that by 2021, Brady would be hoisting the NFL’s Vince Lombardi Trophy once again?

Like that boulder going uphill, sports began to mark time and move forward, step-by-step.

PGA Tour Golf led the way, then some NASCAR, thoroughbred horse racing, the NFL Draft, and Korean baseball all filled vacant airtime. We coveted live sports action to pass the TIME.

Then, the big time, major sports made plans that took hold. The NBA built its bubble in Orlando, thee NHL situated itself in Toronto and Edmonton in Canada, and Baseball picked about labor issues before they finally opened up “Summer” training. We watched the New York Yankees take batting practice on the YES Network and eventually, on July 23, 2020, it was TIME to Play Ball!

Through the year, we wondered:

1. How much TIME does Tom Brady really have to perform at such a high level?
2. There’s the same question for Serena Williams in tennis and it was a question that was answered abruptly for the NBA’s Vince Carter when the shutdown ended his final year.
3. We were shocked that a terrible helicopter accident took the lives of Kobe Bryant and his young daughter and their friends. TIME had come for Kobe and we only wish we could’ve Turned Back Time to warn him of the deadly disaster awaiting.
4. The biggest sports story of the year came when the 2020 Summer Olympic Games were postponed. Hopefully, the Games of the XXXII Olympiad will be played in Tokyo this July. Once again, only TIME will tell.

How often have you asked for more time, wished we had more time, checked the time, cursed the time. Hell, we just lost an hour, right?

If you could only stop the clock, take time and get organized, prepared and be able to focus without the day-to-day distractions from such a busy lifestyle, created with smart phone devices, instant messaging, global business, real-time decision making at the speed of light. Try to get TIME on Your Side.

Yet, as TIME was stopped the past year, were any of us able to fully take advantage of the extra time?

Some found more time for family as young adult children returned home. Some were separated from family, especially concerned about the risk of exposing parent and grandparents to the deadly and contagious COVID-19 and now its emerging variants. we finally wised up, to some degree (ahem Texas, Mississippi and some other dim-witted, misguided States), and we began wearing masks.

TIME marched on.

Did we accomplish anything of note?

Some did, some didn’t. Some stayed safe and some of our loved ones passed away.

There is still TIME.

Signs of Spring are in the air and with them, growing optimism of three different and effective vaccines to ward off serious illness from COVID-19. with that and remaining guidelines for safety, State governments are gradually easing restrictions, as the Federal government purchases more and more of the vaccine doses with hopes to have the vast majority of Americans vaccinated by May or June. There’s a nice list of things to look forward to as March and its lioness windy ways turn to April showers and flowers.

Here are a few things to ponder for the near future:

1. This weekend, Daylight Savings Time begins in most places and an extra hour of much-needed sunlight will inject some “Spring Fever” into our lives.
2. The baseball bats are cracking line-drives in Florida and Arizona. Opening Day nears in Major League Baseball stadiums across the nation.
3. March Madness will be staged once again, after the 2020 hiatus.
4. The NHL and the NBA are pushing forward and their arenas are seeing partial capacity for live spectating.
5. We’re all hoping Tiger Woods recovers from the terrible auto accident in LA.

It might take a few more months, and hopefully, there will be no more major setbacks (see Italy and Brazil, by the way), but THE TIME HAS COME.

Time Has Come Today to get our lives prepared for a new renaissance and re-opening. We’ll have struggles ahead, physically, mentally, and financially, as so many businesses were forced to close down- some temporarily and some for good. Remember as we go up against this virus in its second full year against us, we’re only as strong as our weakest links, whether those links are in our hometowns, Texas or Brazil.

But, we can and we will bounce back. It’s just a matter of TIME.