COMMENTARY
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The ladder stood beneath the basket, as it does any time the Big 12 tournament draws to a close.
But this time no triumphant player or coach was headed up with a pair of scissors to snip off a piece of the championship net. No one was there at all.
This ladder was a lonely instrument of destruction, allowing workers to eventually dismantle the wiring behind the backboard for games that would no longer be played.
No one knows when they’ll be played again, which makes this the most wretched moment in modern American sports history.