Morning Distribution for Tuesday, December 29, 2020

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Morning Distribution]( Tuesday, December 29, 2020 Your daily briefing from FiveThirtyEight --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [2020-BEST-SPORTS_4x3]( [Everything About Sports In 2020 Was Weird … Except Who Won]( By [Neil Paine]( This year disrupted the sports world like no other in modern history. First, the COVID-19 pandemic [shut sports down]( almost completely in the spring and early summer; then, it dramatically altered the schedules and formats of most leagues [when they did return](. The NBA and WNBA played their postseasons in neutral-site bubbles, for instance, while Major League Baseball teams [played only a third]( as many games as usual. Much of the year was spent playing in empty arenas before cardboard or virtual fans as fake crowd noise was piped in. The COVID report was more important than the injury report. This was hardly sports as we knew them before. Because of the massive upheaval, it was fair to assume the sports themselves might also be chaotic. At times, it wasn’t clear that leagues would be able to crown a champion at all — and for those that managed to pull it off, there were serious concerns about legitimacy. With small sample sizes, no clear home advantage and the constant specter of the pandemic hanging over every game, how could the best teams be given a fair test? Would we need to discount 2020’s winners as mere flukes? As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary. Not only did the favorites survive, they actually thrived; if anything, this was probably the most dominant season for top teams in recent memory. Somehow, after the dust settles on the chaos of 2020, we should remember it as the year of no asterisks — at least as far as its champions were concerned. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Goodbye To 2020]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.