The unprecedented past 12 months in sports call for a break from the usual conversations, so this sports talk won’t involve players, coaches or even commissioners. While the COVID-19 story became a sports story, a business story, a schooling story and unfortunately a political story, at its heart it’s always been a medical story, so this discussion of where we’ve been, how it’s gone and what comes next brings us to Dr. Leroy Sims and Dr. John DiFiori.
Sims, who works in the emergency room at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame, Calif., is the NBA’s medical director. DiFiori, who treats sports-related injuries at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, is the NBA’s director of sports medicine.