Random thoughts. Sports columnists love to throw them out there. Writers who begin their columns with “random thoughts while…” have the free rein to dish out as many hot takes as space permits.

We’ve seen more of these columns than ever over the past three months. With no games being played, writers have nothing better to do than toss out opinions on a wide variety of topics.

So here’s my Random Thoughts Column, with a twist. I’m projecting what random thoughts will be kicking around in our heads in 2040, when we look back at what transpired in the sports world this year:

• Hard to believe baseball still thought of itself as “America’s pastime” just 20 years ago. That was before owners and players fought over economics and drove the sport off a cliff.

The 48-game season that took place in August and September was overshadowed by the acrimonious back-and-forth negotiations between MLB and the MLBPA, with both sides talking to reporters and taking to Twitter.

It all left a bad taste in the mouths of fans who had been starving for games to return. And it left the door wide open for the NBA and NHL, who famously staged their playoffs and became the most talked-about events of the summer of 2020.

• We’ll never forget those NBA playoffs. The Disney World backdrop was perfect, even if the Celtics’ magical ride came to an end in the NBA finals. After beating Toronto and Milwaukee to advance they just didn’t have enough left in the tank to get by the Lakers.

We’ll all remember that season as the year Jaylen Brown emerged as a superstar on and off the court. He marched in protests, and then helped Boston march to the Eastern Conference title.

They didn’t win that year, but that playoff experience set the tone for the championships that followed over the next five seasons.

• It’s hard to remember that 2020 was the first time the NBA held the finals at the end of the summer. Before that, basketball was played in the fall and winter. Starting the season in January and carrying it into September seems like the obvious choice now, but it took the coronavirus pandemic, and baseball’s shutdown, to clear the way for basketball to become the summer game of choice.

• The wisdom of that decision was still up for debate in 2021, when baseball returned for a full season. But the MLB lockout the next year – when the entire season was lost in the battle over the expired Collective Bargaining Agreement – gave basketball center stage, and that sport has held onto it ever since.

• The 2020 season was also the year hockey played through the end of the summer. It still seems jarring to watch Zdeno Chara hoist the Stanley Cup in an empty TD Garden, but the elation on his face made it clear he didn’t notice the lack of fans. Incredibly, he was asked repeatedly through the pandemic if he was close to retiring. Here he is, 20 years later, getting ready to play his final game for the Bruins at the age of 63.

• Football season started two weeks later than originally planned in 2020, but the NFL came out of the pandemic with a tightened grip on its hold as America’s most popular sport.

That was the long-forgotten Jarrett Stidham year, the season before Bill Belichick pulled off the trade for Jimmy Garrapolo that put the Patriots back in the Super Bowl the following year.

That extended the Golden Age of Boston Sports. Twenty years later, that hasn’t changed.

Tom Caron is a studio host for Red Sox broadcast on NESN. His column runs on Tuesdays in the Portland Press Herald.

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