Shoutout to all the exceptions , across all the sports, like chatty baseball managers and the United States women’s national soccer team, which proved that joy can be a key ingredient to winning, and that equal rights is a fight worth taking public. And to the W.N.B.A. players who actively supported the Black Lives Matter movement in 2016, months before their male counterparts in the N.B.A.

So many places in sports want to be taken seriously while avoiding adult conversations. It’s the Patriot Way, dismissing anything uncomfortable with a Brady smile or a Belichick scowl. Let the office send out a statement vetted by the public-relations staff. We have a game to play.

That is part of the appeal, for some, to make sports an obtuse distraction from reality, but any suggestion that sports used to be uncoupled from culture and politics is myth. “Stick to sports” is the cry of the lout, accented by incuriosity and indifference.

The N.F.L.? There have been more meaningful discussions about Colin Kaepernick among N.B.A. executives, coaches and players than anything we’ve heard within the N.F.L. in the three years that Kaepernick has been out of football.

Major League Baseball? It once got cultural credit for steering civil rights through barriers and into the mainstream, but it surrendered that role long ago. It now belongs to the N.B.A., mostly, with its better — but far from stellar — recent history of hiring coaches and executives of color, of promoting women into roles as assistants (10 this season), referees and broadcasters, and creating an environment where inclusivity does not feel entirely like a marketing campaign.