From Kobe Bryant to Tom Seaver to Whitey Ford to David Stern, sports deaths in 2020 were just too much

The COVID-19 pandemic made 2020 a year of incalculable loss. Lives, businesses, jobs, carefully laid plans of every sort – all gone.

The sports world was not spared, with the comfort of its predictable calendar rendered barely recognizable by the virus. If only that were the worst thing that happened in sports this year.

Rather, the worst of it was an expanded roster of famous names who died, an A-list well beyond any normal 12 months’ worth of actuarial accounting.

Some of it was related to the virus, most not, starting with the most shocking news of all – the death in January at age 41 of Kobe Bryant in a California helicopter crash that also killed his daughter, Gianna, and seven others.

In most years, that would have been an early headline almost impossible to surpass. But then the pandemic hit, distracting the globe, and soon generations of other iconic sports figures were leaving surviving fans behind.

One could spend hours strategizing a fantasy baseball lineup featuring players who passed on in 2020.

That includes a starting rotation led by Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson and Whitey Ford – with Don Larsen available for a spot start in a key situation. Game 5 of a World Series, perhaps?

How does a starting outfield of Lou Brock, Al Kaline and Jimmy Wynn sound, with Claudell Washington coming off the bench?

Infielders? Joe Morgan, Dick Allen, Tony Fernandez and (for Yankees fans of a certain age) Horace Clarke.

Bob Watson could help this team as a player, naturally, but let’s make him the general manager, and have Hank Steinbrenner give him regular calls demanding trades or free agent signings.

The above and below are far from comprehensive lists. None of this is. The list is too long. But you get the idea.

Diego Maradona was among the handful of best soccer players of the 20th century. Gone at 60.

Gale Sayers was among the most dynamic running backs in football history. Gone at 77.

Four Hall of Fame Packers of the 1960s, Herb Adderley, Willie Davis, Paul Hornung and Willie Wood, gone. Then a Hall of Fame Steeler in Kevin Greene.

John Thompson and Lute Olson, who both coached teams to NCAA men’s basketball tournament titles. David Stern, who shaped the modern NBA.

Nancy Darsch, the first coach of the Liberty. Phyllis George, a pioneer among women in sports television.

Rafer Johnson. Mickey Wright. Tommy Heinsohn. Tom Dempsey. Bobby Mitchell. Fred Dean. Chris Doleman. Roger Mayweather. Jerry Sloan. Wes Unseld. Del Shofner. Ray Perkins.

Don Shula!

Locally, there were grave sports world losses as well, such as famed Garden City football and lacrosse coach Tom Flatley, who died at 80, and Connetquot baseball coach Bob Ambrosini, who was 69.

They all had their stories and fans and places in sports history, even if eventually the tally grew so long that numbness began to set in. It was all too much. Way too much.

But as we hope for a more cheerful 2021, let us end here with one of sports’ most cheerful figures – someone whose name inevitably generates a smile for those among us old enough to recall the heyday of a certain globetrotting basketball team.

Fred "Curly" Neal died in March at 77. He now presumably is dribbling his way around a mighty impressive weave with Goose Tatum, Meadowlark Lemon, Marques Haynes . . . and Kobe.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.