Sports underwent a social and cultural reckoning in 2020.Sports lost a legend in 2020.Sports witnessed Los Angeles celebrate two major championships in 2020 — albeit from a distance.Sports in 2020 was a 12-month emotional rollercoaster of strange, sad, inspiring and jubilant engulfed within a pandemic that caused a months-long shutdown of sports across the country and most of the world.The Times will publish six essays and a timeline from Dec. 22-27 looking at the deep impacts Kobe Bryant’s death, the COVID-19 pandemic and the fight for social and racial equality had on the sports world in 2020.
