“He’s here,” someone said.

Then everyone was saying it. The Boynton Beach football players paused while going through extended warm-ups for their spring scrimmage against Olympic Heights to watch the two luxury SUVs parking at one end of the stadium.

Lamar Jackson was a few minutes late, but that hardly mattered now. The Baltimore Ravens quarterback moved onto the field that once was his playground wearing a white shirt, camouflaged shorts and a wool cap as people surrounded him.

He gave hugs, smiles and pounded fists with a couple of Boynton Beach players — “He dapped me,” one turned to tell the team — all while moving to the midfield stage set up for his Friday night.

He then gave a quick hug on the stage and sat beside Boynton Beach coach Trequan Smith. The coach, like several now-grown men, were teammates with Jackson on this field in 2014 and 2015. Each have some brush-with fame stories, like Smith, who was a safety who tackled Jackson in the quarterback’s first practice after joining the team as a junior.

“The coach came up to me and told me to never tackle him again,” Smith said. “They didn’t want him to get hurt. Everyone knew how good he was.”

Jackson was The Man, even then, scoring 52 touchdowns in two Boynton Beach seasons in a way that previewed his winning the Heisman Trophy and two NFL Most Valuable Player awards. That’s why he’s here, why the school principal and the Boynton Beach mayor spoke — why Smith didn’t mention that tackle when it was his turn but said, “This is a great moment in Boynton Beach community history.”

Smith held the famed, now-framed No. 7 jersey Jackson wore at Boynton Beach and announced it was being retired.

“It symbolizes greatness,” Smith said. “It symbolizes your leadership, your inspiration. And we thank you.”

There was more gifts than just a jersey retirement. “Lamar Jackson Way,” was the newly renamed road outside the school, as a street sign showed. It had a 7 mph speed limit, as another sign showed.

Jackson held the signs a minute before setting them down to talk.

“Shout out to everyone,” he said.

He singled out a couple of people, including an Olympic Heights official by the stage, Dieuly Aristilde, another high school teammate. After a few more mentions, just over a minute in talking, Jackson gave a final thought to the high-school kids.

“Don’t’ let anyone tell you, you can’t do it,” he said. “You go do it.”

Maybe, for those who knew his story, this was a high school marker for when college recruiters insisted Jackson was a receiver at the next level. It wasn’t until late in recruiting, when Louisville’s Lamar Thomas showed his boss, Bobby Petrino, the video of Jackson that a team recruited him as a quarterback.

Jackson wasn’t saying if that was the backstory of his advice. He moved off the stage after a minute of photo opportunities, already moving to the exits. He was stopped on the field a moment by a referee awaiting the impending scrimmage.

The referee, Gregory Kirkwood, was the assistant middle school principal at Tradewinds Middle School when Jackson attended there. Jackson laughs with Kirkwood over the chance meeting, calls in the other referees for a group picture.

“We don’t get this every day,” one of the referees said.

Maybe as Jackson moved off the field to the SUVs that’s what the community took from this. Jackson has moved on in the past decade to sports fame and riches. But a part of his story remains here, before the football world knew of him, on this field.

“Those were some good days for us,” Smith. “For him to come back for a few minutes, it’s something these kids will remember seeing.”

Kirkwood came over to ask Smith who the ball boy was for the scrimmage. Smith called the ball boy over to examine the footballs. As Jackson’s SUV drove away, it was a high school moment again, just as they’d spent this evening remembering when it was for him.

“How’s your day?” a player might say.

Or maybe just: “Let’s get to work.”

“That’s about respect, about thanking those helping you — about a culture of family,’’ Fitz-Gerald said.

It also shows there’s something at work beyond unprecedented winning at Stoneman Douglas. That’s especially apt as the Eagles chase a record sixth consecutive state championship this weekend in Fort Myers, because a key member of the family might not go.

“I’m not sure I’m going,’’ Fitz-Gerald said.

He doesn’t want to leave his wife, Colleen.

“I might watch it from home,’’ he said.

Colleen suffers from a brain tumor.

“My coaches and players, they could handle it and bring it home for us,’’ he said.

The scene as Stoneman Douglas advanced by West Broward this weekend was an advertisement for high school baseball. Fans overflowed from the bleachers to stand six deep behind the home-plate screen Friday night at Anthony Rizzo Field.

Scouts took final notes on players from both teams before next month’s draft. Kids waited after Stoneman Douglas senior Gio Rojas’s latest pitching gem for the top prospect’s autograph.

A board behind the Stoneman Douglas dugout listed the program’s 38 players who have been drafted, including seven major leaguers — from Rizzo (whose nephew, Jake, plays third base) to Boston Red Sox outfielder Roman Anthony.

And at the concession stand behind home plate, the menu on a chalkboard starts with “Cookies for Colleen.” The hefty, homemade chocolate chip cookies cost $3 apiece, or two for $5. They’re baked by one of the player’s mother, Meredith Acierno, who works the concession stand each game.

“We want to get word of the GoFundMe page out,’’ she said. “We were putting the QR code out sometimes by handing out (“Colleen Strong”) bracelets. With teams coming through here for playoffs, I thought the cookies would be outside the usual sphere of things we do.”

They sell about 50 a game.

“You never know, if it takes one person to share (the GoFundMe page), and it’s somebody with a resource it can help,’’ Acierno said.

This is how they’ve helped this season, player or parent, in big and small ways. Food is brought to the coach’s home. Friends sit with Colleen when Todd has to go out. Players had several fundraisers to help medical treatments. Opposing teams contributed gate money to her cause.

The GoFundMe page currently stands at $118,000, a total with the majority of contributors offering anywhere from $25 to $200.

“As we’ve said this season, we’re not just playing for us — we’re doing it for Colleen as well,’’ Rojas said. “We’re out here every day working in coach’s name and her name and doing our job and getting it done to make her proud.”

“It’s added a dimension to everyone’s life, trying to help,’’ said Greg Raley, the program’s booster club president. “It’s especially there for Todd, obviously, trying to balance his first priority of being there for his wife and, I think, doing what is best for his team.”

Raley, working the scoreboard in the press box, drops his voice.

“It hasn’t been easy.”

Todd Fitz-Gerald remembers again the date he can’t forget.

“Everything changed Nov. 23,’’ he said.

The family was together, their two grown sons, Hunter and Devin, both minor-league players, home a few days before Thanksgiving. That’s when Colleen suffered a seizure.

“I didn’t know what was going on,’’ her husband said. “Thank God my neighbor is a policeman and next-door neighbor a fireman. They helped. We got it under control.”

That led to the diagnosis of the brain tumor and started them down a daily path of treatments. There were 42 days of chemotherapy and radiation. Surgery. More rounds of chemotherapy. Immunotherapy.

“We’re doing everything we can to keep her with us, get her stronger, praying to God that he can give us a miracle,’’ Todd Fitz-Gerald said.

They met in high school at American Heritage in Plantation, going separate ways in college before coming together after it. They’ve been married 30 years. So much of that time has been spent around a baseball diamond, with Todd coaching 16 years at their alma mater before moving to Stoneman Douglas in 2011.

“We just approach it one day at a time now,’’ he said.

It was an especially good Sunday. On Mother’s Day, Hunter, 25, hit two home runs and now has nine to lead the Seattle Mariners’ Double-A team, the Arkansas Travelers. Devin, 20, a top-10 prospect in the Washington Nationals’ system, had two RBIs for his Class-A Wilmington Blue Rocks.

“They then called home and talked to their mom,’’ dad said. “They call every day. She would do anything for her sons and husband, and we’ll do anything for her.”

She wants him to keep coaching. He needs it, too, even if he’s missed practices and games to attend to her.

Still, Stoneman Douglas has kept winning like any other year. No team in any class had won five consecutive state championships when the Eagles did last season. Now, maybe six?

“It’d be one for the ages,’’ Fitz-Gerald said. “I don’t think it’d ever be done again. It says a lot about the program, a lot about my coaching staff, a lot about the kids in the program — the administration, the booster club, the people behind the scenes.”

He left out one person. But he’s an old-school leader stressing work and fundamentals and proper self-modesty. His standards don’t change with the teams, right down to checking up on players’ grades every week.

“If they don’t uphold the standards, they don’t play,’’ he said. “That isn’t about baseball. It’s about life. And, well, life isn’t always fair. It’s hard. Sometimes you’re dealt a blow.

“You’ve got to be able to weather it. These kids have been turned upside down this year with all that’s going on in my household and me not being here all the time with my coaches. They’ve done a great job. Great. I couldn’t be happier for them.”

Now comes one final weekend of baseball in Fort Myers. Stoneman Douglas plays Oviedo Hagerty in the Class 7A semifinal on Friday night. With a win, the Eagles play the final on Saturday.

Maybe the coach drives over on his own. Maybe he stays home. What could be the singular achievement of the baseball program he developed is certainly a crowning example of what he preaches to players.

Family first.

“I’ve got to make sure my wife is in good hands,’’ he said. “My coaches, the players — they know what to do. My wife, every day she wakes up in the morning is a good day.”

Do you hear the cursing in Portuguese and Scottish rolling in? The cheapest ticket to their June 24 match at Hard Rock Stadium is $2,106 on the FIFA-directed resale market.

Or how about the lowest ticket of $4,282 for the June 27 Colombia-Portugal game at Hard Rock?

That doesn’t cover the $248 parking pass for resale on Ticketmaster, or the control-yourself $100 for a few in-game drinks and arepas. Total to watch Colombia-Portugal: $4,782 a ticket. Marketing slogan: See The Beautiful Game, Eat Chicken Broth For A Year.

Here’s an idea for an enterprising travel company: Start a Cheer-Like-A-Native tour.

Instead of having people dip into their 401K to watch Colombia play Portugal, this tour involves a $401 flight to Cartagena the day before the game and a return three nights later, as Google flights priced it. Add a $200 splurge in a Colombian sports bar watching the game with local fans, enjoy a $250-a-night hotel, get a mini-vacation and spend about a third of the cost of a game ticket. You might even bring the family at that price.

Or go to Lisbon on Cheer-Like-A-Native Tours, if you want to root for Portugal in that game That’s a $1,100 flight for the same, three-night experience. So, it would cost about half the game ticket and you get to eat cozido a portuguesa on its home turf rather than spout get-off-my-lawn ideas about World Cup prices.

These are all for opening matches, too. Wait until the bigger matches like the Round of 32 one at Hard Rock on July 3 or the quarterfinal match on July 11. The bottom line is this World Cup’s bottom line comes with the tournament’s most expensive tickets ever the world’s most popular event collides with all-American capitalism at its greediest.

The dynamic pricing model the United States uses for airlines, concerts and sports tickets leans into the resale markets as any consumer knows. It might as well take direct payments from your 401K to some events.

FIFA, somehow a nonprofit, takes a 30-percent cut of the resale tickets. It says this money is needed to expand the game of soccer. Where are they expanding, Saturn?

The cheapest ticket to the World Cup final on July 19th at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. is $9,552 on Stubhub.com. That’s 10 times the cheapest ticket at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Fans and politicians have complained in every language. A European consumer watchdog filed a legal complaint to the European Commission stating, “Dynamic pricing turns fans’ loyalty into a bidding war, inflates costs and locks out many supporters.”

All this means soccer fans are learning what American sports fans did years ago. The biggest sports events aren’t for you. They’re for the social oligarchs and corporate muckety-mucks who never have to check their bank statements and don’t know the names of all players.

There’s a reason local fans shrugged when Miami Dolphins owner Steve Ross said the Super Bowl wasn’t coming back to Miami. It’s for rich people, not common fans who were priced out long ago. Ditto for a prime reason the Super Bowl can’t return — the stadium space going to F1 races.

Maybe soccer has a world of fans who haven’t quite grasped this new-money concept. A New York Times story told of Argentinian fans who embrace debt, plot team schedules like career paths, sleep 10 to a room and sacrifice beyond all normal financial rationale to attend the World Cup in the manner Americans do to attend college.

Here’s an economical idea for this World Cup. Become a fan of Uruguay. You can buy a ticket to the first World Cup match at Hard Rock on June 15 between Uruguay and Saudi Arabia for $454 on Ticketmaster. Or, cheaper still, a ticket to Uruguay versus Cabo Verde on June 21 costs $401.

At those prices, the Cheer-Like-A-Native flight ticket of $836 to Montevideo seems outrageous.

There’s another option besides Uruguay-Cabo Verde on June 21, if you want to catch a game. The Miami Marlins play San Francisco at loanDepot park. A ticket is $26. Maybe World Cup fans should quit complaining, face financial facts and become Marlins fans.

That’s not Miami’s idea of an athletic director today.

I sat in Hurricanes athletic director Paul Dee’s office two decades ago when he discussed his vision for the football and basketball programs right down to the type of young, rising coaches that would win and get paid elsewhere to fit into Miami’s budget.

UM’s next athletic director won’t talk like that.

The Hurricanes were at the front of the Name-Image-Likeness age in recent years, activating the new rules in a way that took their football program to the top again.

Now they’re reorganizing the role of an athletic director in a manner that fits their new-way thinking. Dan Radakovich is leaving the athletic director’s office after five years of steadfast integrity.

But the athletic director as you think of him isn’t going anywhere. School president Joe Echevarria is the one who changed the sports idea at Miami. He brought a new vision. He expanded Miami’s budget and thinking.

“Spending as much as any school out there on sports,” a Miami source said.

Ohio State? Texas?

“Any of them.”

Five years ago, then school-president Julio Frenk commissioned Echevarria, the CEO of the UHealth, and his chief of staff, Rudy Fernandez, to rethink the sports department. Frenk had nothing to do with sports. He was the classic, academic president.

Echevarria did more than pump money into programs that were underfunded for decades. Randy Shannon was the second-lowest paid football coach in the ACC. Al Golden talked of having the worst facilities in the conference.

Echevarria brought new money to change that. Echevarria, Fernandez and a small group of insiders then made the big decisions in a way the classic athletic director once did.

The Mas brothers, Jorge and Jose, are in that group. Manny Kadre, the Miami auto magnate and chair of the board of trustees, is on the inside, too.

They hired Mario Cristobal away from Oregon more than four years ago, the new coach flying back on Jose Mas’ plane.

Radakovich was hired just after Cristobal. But no matter. They didn’t need an athletic director for that. They also hired Jai Lucas as basketball coach a year ago. Again, Radakovich was along for the ride on that.

See, you have to strike traditional ways from the Miami’s thinking. Echevarria is the rare president who walks amid stretching players before games, has accompanied players to the NFL draft and fills his game suite with not just UM but national celebrities. Bill Belichick and actor Matthew McConaughey were among those watching the national championship game with him.

So, what does Miami want in an athletic director?

A budget follower. A NIL overseer. It wants to develop the business side with sponsorships, which is why Michael Yormark, the Roc Nation Sports CEO and former Florida Panthers president has been mentioned.

There’s also the overarching question of Miami’s future in the ACC to explore. Florida State and Clemson settled their lawsuit against the conference a year ago about possibly leaving.

Part of that was negotiating the exit fee for any team to drop from $120 million to $75 million in the next few years. That’s roughly what Texas and Oklahoma paid to join the SEC.

“I think it’s very likely the ACC loses a couple of schools,” ESPN college insider Paul Finebaum said at the time of the settlement.

The ACC was good for Miami this past year. Its football team had a lesser schedule than the Big Ten or SEC. Miami also got to keep all its postseason money, roughly $30 million, rather than split it up among conference members. Cha-ching.

But one year rarely looks like the next in college sports. What will these conferences look like three years from now? What will be Miami’s best situation in that world?

That’ll be Echevarria’s decision. But he needs a partner to sift through the details. That’s part of what Miami needs — a business assistant. That’s what the athletic director’s role is in this new world.

Not a big boss hiring coaches.

Not a big personality pushing a vision.

Those days have passed like those visits to Jankovich’s and Dee’s office. Welcome to the new world.

“I’ll read you our texts,’’ Hunt says.

They were both grown men by then, each 48, and not the high-school juniors who first met in a football collision that left English paralyzed.

“Happy Easter,’’ Hunt texted that morning. “May God bless you and your family. I love you.”

“Thank you,’’ English texted back. “Wish the same for your family. Hope you’re having a wonderful life. I love you, too.”

That’s how they communicated through the years, the most important things always being said openly and easily. But now Hunt stops reading from his phone and pauses to collect his words.

“I’m glad I’ve got these texts,’’ he says. “We’ve been friends for years — great friends over the last 10 years. He actually became one of my closest friends. We’d usually talk a few times week. And, his murder … I don’t really know what to say.”

No one knows what to say about English being shot several times in his wheelchair outside a Sunrise banquet hall. A security guard there was charged with murder. His sister, Tanika, doesn’t even try.

“I have no words for the hole in my heart,’’ she says.

His football coach at Stranahan High, Perry Egelsky, who had nightmares long after English was paralyzed and hired him for a teaching job a few years ago, says: “I didn’t think anything could be worse than the tragedy that left him paralyzed. But this tragedy …”

Then there are the Hunts, father and son, Bob and Ned. For more than 30 years, this wasn’t just a story of English’s life being changed in a random moment. It also became a story of how many stood beside him. Donors. Teammates. The big-name pro athlete who prefers to remain anonymous but gave money all those years ago and phoned the family this past week to express condolences.

The Hunts and English worked to turn a tragic story into something good. It started in the moments after that game’s collision in 1995, when Ned Hunt, a Pine Crest School fullback, caught a short pass and was tackled by English, the Stranahan linebacker nicknamed “Ironhead.”

Hunt’s hip was hurt. He was screaming in pain until a trainer bent close to him and said he wasn’t the one hurt the most on the play. Hunt looked over and saw English flat on the field, not moving. He stopped screaming.

Ned’s father, Bob Hunt, visited the hospital that night to check on English and heard the news he was paralyzed from the neck down. That would improve to where he got feeling above his chest, including use of his arms. But that wasn’t known when Bob Hunt took Ned to visit English a few nights later and left them alone.

English’s first words defined who he was.

“I don’t blame you; it’s not your fault,’’ he told Ned. “We were just playing football.”

Somewhere, amid their visits, Bob Hunt decided to help however he could. The best way he knew was with his expertise as a lawyer. He organized a fundraiser. He negotiated English’s insurance settlement. He set up a trust.

Later, when English wanted to attend college, Hunt called the founder of Lynn University to smooth his admittance. He took English to Orlando to get him a permit to drive, then got him a handicap-accessible van to drive with the help of Phil Smith Ford in Pompano Beach. He helped him buy a townhouse.

“I didn’t know I needed help — but he did,” is what English said of Bob Hunt.

They came from opposite sides of Broward in many ways, the private-school white family and the public-school Black kid. But none of that mattered as they got to know each other. They were more alike than different, they found

“You know the movie, ‘The Blind Side?’ ” English once said of the movie where a Black, high school player was helped by a white family. “Our relationship is like that in some ways — except I’m not living with them, and (he laughed) not becoming a pro player.”

The Hunts never saw it as a one-way relationship. They felt inspired by English’s upbeat attitude. He made friends easily. He could talk on serious subjects or with a sense of humor.

So, as the years went by, the relationship between English and the Hunts wasn’t about giving or receiving. It became something more common to life. A friendship.

“He was a remarkable person,’’ Bob Hunt says. “I never heard him complain. We’d have deep conversations. We’d go out to dinner and have fun. He’d come over to our house.”

Once, when English visited, Hunt was concerned what his two young grandchildren might say in meeting this man who couldn’t walk. English took care of that. He showed them what his wheelchair could do.

“They just wanted to sit in his lap and take rides,’’ Hunt says.

English grew into middle-age helping with some community work and navigating life’s normal ups and downs. His parents died. His brother died.

Ned also went on his own life from college in Pensacola to getting married and raising two children in North Carolina. But he and English talked regularly. They’d go out when Ned visited home.

“We just went to Flanigan’s a while ago and talked about normal stuff — stuff guys talk about,’’ he says. “If the accident came up, it came up. But we really were just two friends talking about their lives.”

Ned was moving back to Broward this weekend to start a new job and get his boat captain’s license. So, they expected to see each other more. Instead, he got a phone call from his mother saying English had been killed in a way no one can still understand.

“He couldn’t hurt a flea,’’ Bob Hunt says. “He had a strap that held him in the wheelchair. He could move his arms and hands. But if he took the strap off and tried to get up, he’d just fall down. He was no threat to anyone.”

Bob visited last week with English’s sister and other family members. They consoled each other and told stories. Good stories. Ones that made everyone laugh.

“I told them I talked with Kendrick about everything,’’ Hunt says. “Politics. Race. Religion. Even sex. That had everyone laughing. They wanted details. So, we had a good laugh talking about some of that for a while.”

Maybe that’s the best way to end this — with that laughter. English’s story is a bookended tragedy, three decades apart, paralysis to violent death. But it’s also a story about the good that rose out of that bad to tell another story, a beautiful one, right to the end, when his family and friends could laugh through their pain.

He was also articulating part of this new regime’s philosophy in that answer. Just like when saying if there’s debate between coaches or scouts and himself on a draft pick, “The final decision comes down to me, and I’m going to do what’s best for this place.”

Or, earlier this offseason, in talking about signing quarterback Malik Willis, “His character aligns with our culture.”

What use is a plan if you can’t articulate it? That’s been one of the Dolphins varied problems of late. They couldn’t express their a plan, or it sounded wrong in ways that eventually proved it all wrong.

Just look at this: The last time the Dolphins rebuilt in the ambitious manner they’re doing now, ownership and the front office said they were tanking while hiring a coach, Brian Flores, who refused to do so. And then Chris Grier mixed even more signals by signing a just-good-enough-to-win veteran quarterback in Ryan Fitzpatrick.

Grier also took a wasted 2019 season to set up an arsenal of draft picks like this current regime did in this first offseason. So, this rebuild is already a year ahead of that last, failed one. Sullivan isn’t just articulating his plan if you listen closely. He’s acting on it.

“We’re going to be a draft and develop team,” Sullivan said.

Does it succeed or fail? Who knows before his first draft, much less his first season? But the Dolphins sound like they’re a pro organization again. And, yes, words matter. Having command of the message is part of a good leader’s work.

Look around town at the teams with the most success. Miami Heat president Pat Riley has two rules for every team employee: No complaining and no gossiping. Those five words offer a glimpse into Riley’s larger ideas on running a championship team.

Does any coach mobilize the English language better than Florida Panthers’ Paul Maurice? From trotting out the sarcastic Will Ferrell line after a playoff loss — “Panic!” — to detonating any tension after laying into players on the bench — “They needed some profanity in their lives” — he offers a daily course in how a strong leader sounds whether winning Stanley Cup titles or losing like this past season.

The best leaders in any business, you see, choose words carefully. Film director Clint Eastwood refused to bark out, “Action!” and “Cut” on his sets, because it startled horses on his Western films — and actors in some way, too, he felt.

There are a hundred ways up the mountain for sports teams, but they all start with a strong leader’s direction. Don Shula repeated the goals the first day of every training camp: Win the division, win home-field for the playoffs and win the Super Bowl. Simple, right? But putting it on the table for everyone to hear gave it weight.

Jimmy Johnson’s strength was boiling the complex process of drafting players into five simple thoughts beyond the obvious one of talent: Intelligence, hard work, a playmaker, a gym rat and good character.

“You don’t win championships with bums,” Johnson said concerning that last trait.

Sun Sentinel’s final NFL mock draft: Who will Dolphins select at No. 11 and 30?

A strong leader’s developed ideas might come out in mumbling fashion, like Bill Belichick’s, “On to Cincinnati,” to express moving forward after a loss. It might be Bill Parcells expressing a relevant thought this week about young players, “If they don’t bite as puppies, they probably don’t bite.”

We’ll see where this goes with the Dolphins new regime. It’s still early. But across these opening few months you’re haven’t seen or heard anything that raises red flags of concern.

There’s been no coach Mike McDaniel calling his players, “teammates,” in expressing his kumbaya culture, There’s been no quarterback Tua Tagovailoa signing a massive contract and immaturely telling fans, “Show me the money!”

There’s certainly been nothing like Grier saying he didn’t consider injury history in picking players or saying the media worried more about the offensive line problems than he did. Beyond that, did Grier ever lay out his plan for winning football? Did he ever, for instance, explain the big switch from an organization built around drafts to one that traded draft picks for big-money players?

Sullivan has been repetitively clear of his philosophy: His way is to draft and develop players. He’s done that first step of articulating his plan. This upcoming draft is the next step, the one where these broad, philosophical brush strokes about competition and character are brought to life with young players.

We got a lesson in the toxin of tanking.

That was the real side issue of Adebayo’s fun night — fun, right until the aftermath. Then many decided Adebayo’s feat was something else due to the final, few minutes when the Miami Heat fouled to stop the clock and the Washington Wizards triple-teamed him.

Above all that was the real issue: Washington is tanking this season. It purposely played a lineup that would be a play-in team for the NCAA Tournament. It had no one to guard Adebayo. It never adjusted defensively to stop him for three-and-a-half quarters.

Washington coach Brian Keefe seemed fine with Adebayo scoring big to assure the Heat won the game right to the point his team was on the embarrassing side of history. Then he changed his tune and chaos began.

That’s the poison in an NBA season where nearly a third of the league is trying to lose. The Heat’s seven-game win streak entering Saturday is helped by such teams. Everything’s affected. Check the playoff races.

The NHL is different. Look on the other side of South Florida where the Panthers keep defining who they are in a troubled season. They won two dramatic games that actually might hurt them in the long run.

Pride can be like that. It can help you scale the highest achievements. It also can’t be turned off when you might want it to be.

The Panthers won’t make the playoffs to defend their back-to-back titles after a troubled year of injuries. They’re nine points and five teams behind the final playoff spot with 17 games to play. Not happening.

The door prize is they get a first-round draft pick if they finish among the bottom 10 of the NHL. But they entered Saturday tied for 12th with the Los Angeles Kings.

Coach Paul Maurice has started resting some players. He’s also complained for months about the workload of players due to so many injuries.

So, why not tank? This is where it is strategically allowed, even encouraged. Having a season fall apart in front of you, especially due to injury as in the Panthers’ case, is the exception to the anti-tank rule.

“You would love to say you’re being strategic, but you can’t,” general manager Bill Zito said a week ago at the trade deadline. “The team will play as hard as they can every single night. Whatever happens, happens.

“We will react when the season is over and we know, and we will plan for both scenarios.”

This is what the ticket-buying fan deserves. That shouldn’t be lost here. Not enough leagues care about the people who pay money to watch. How can fans care about the NBA regular season when so many teams don’t care between teams tanking and players resting?

The Dolphins had a litmus-test decision involving this subject with the signing of Willis. It tells of today’s sports culture and the fan base’s confidence in the Dolphins that so many fans wanted them to be the Wizards this season. They wanted the Dolphins to tank for a quarterback in the 2027 draft.

That also tells how many ignore the lesson from the Dolphins’ attempt at tanking in 2019. It exposed the Dolphins in an embarrassing way. It spoke of what really wins in sports. Strong leadership. Sound decisions. Proper organizational culture.

The Dolphins had none of that for the past decade. Maybe new management changes that. It’s too early to say. But there’s a clear change in the manner general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan goes about business as the Willis signing showed.

Previously, Dolphins management always found reasons to push defining decisions like the quarterback into next season. Sullivan could have done that and heard applause. He understood his job is to fall in love with the right quarterback and aggressively get him. He knew Willis from Green Bay. He got him.

Will it work? Stay tuned. What is obvious is the Dolphins aren’t going the Wizards route. They’re going the Panthers way, the Heat way — the way of all well-run franchises in the face of the infernal temptation of tanking.

What hasn’t changed for Nova Southeastern men’s basketball over the past six years is simpler to see: They haven’t lost at home.

NSU won its 100th consecutive home game on Tuesday night, 104-91, against Rollins in the opening round of the Sunshine State Conference tournament at Rick Case Arena.

Jim Crutchfield’s team is ranked No. 1 in Division II and leads the nation in scoring per game. It has advanced to elite eights of the national tournament for the past four years, won two national titles and finished second once.

Now comes this 100th straight home win that brings all this recent success together. NSU began the streak on Feb. 26, 2020.

“What I like about this streak is it involves so many people,’’ Crutchfield said leading up to the win. “It involves coaches over these years. It involves 40 to 50 players. So many people have been a part of it in a way that means something.”

Kentucky has the longest home winning streak in college basketball with 129 consecutive victories from 1943 to 1955. The Sharks’ win puts them second on the list by moving ahead of UCLA’s 99 straight home wins from 1971 to 1974.

Guard Ross Reeves scored 32 points for Nova in Tuesday’s win, and center Jaxon Napp had 19 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Guard Dallas Graziani had 11 points and 12 assists.

The big stat was turnovers, as Rollins had trouble with Nova’s full-court pressure. Rollins had 18 turnovers to NSU’s five.

The Sharks, 25-1, can make it 101 straight home wins Thursday in the conference semifinals.

This assumes Nova Southeastern’s men’s basketball team does it Tuesday night. And coach Jim Crutchfield hasn’t assumed his way to winning two Division II titles in the past three years, being ranked No. 1 again this season and not losing on their Davie campus in five seasons.

“Rollins is a tough matchup for us,’’ Crutchfield said of Tuesday’s opponent in the Sunshine State Conference tournament. “Last week, they went ahead with two minutes to go. We made a couple shots and beat them at the buzzer.”

That’s the thing about a great sports streak. It has rare moments. A few years ago, Crutchfield walked to midcourt to shake hands with his counterpart, sure his team had lost on a last-seconds play. But a Virginia Union player had stepped out of bounds. Four-tenths of a second remained. Nova scored to win.

“It’s hard to believe we haven’t lost at some point,’’ Crutchfield said.

Crutchfield, 69, is a rare treasure if you’re a sports aficionado. He works from a home office with Division II’s limited resources. He has two rules: No complaining and no swearing. NBA minds like the Miami Heat’s Erik Spoelstra and Boston’s Brad Stevens have talked with him at length.

The strength of his up-tempo system — The System, it’s become called — isn’t just evidenced by Nova’s top ranking and Division II-leading 102.2 points per game average. The fifth- and sixth-ranked teams, Gannon and West Liberty, are coached by a former player and assistant using The System.

“If you force more turnovers and get more rebounds than your opponent, you’ll take more shots,’’ Crutchfield says in explaining The System.

Back to the original question: Can any team win 100 consecutive home games again? Crutchfield doesn’t make the streak a topic with his players, though he recently did ask if anyone knew who had the longest home streak in sports.

One player had looked it up. Kentucky’s basketball team won 129 consecutive home games from 1943 to 1955.

“Seventy years ago,’’ Crutchfield said to his players. “Anyone know the second-longest home streak?”

No one did. John Wooden’s UCLA team won 99 straight from 1971 to 1974.

“Fifty years ago,’’ Crutchfield said.

There have been other notable streaks. The University of Miami football team won 58 straight home games from 1985 to 1994. Clemson came the closest to that, winning 40 straight at home before losing in 2022.

There are great, individual streaks that go over the century mark. Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander currently has scored at least 20 points for 123 consecutive games, closing in on Wilt Chamberlain’s record 126 consecutive games with at least 20 points.

But that’s one great player. The Sharks’ streak involves something larger. Crutchfield isn’t much a fan of records or streaks, to the point he didn’t care when some tried to make a big deal of NSU breaking scoring marks or leading the country in various stats.

“What I like about this streak is involves so many people,’’ Crutchfield said. “It involves coaches over these years. It involves 40 to 50 players. So many people have been a part of it in a way that means something.”

Veteran guard Dallas Graziani of Pembroke Pines and Ross Reeves, the leading scorer, direct this team. Jaxon Nap, at 6-foot-7, provides the only size on the team. Others have learned roles or tweaked talents to fit into The System.

Winning has meant a 25% increase in attendance in each of the past three years. Floor seats were sold out for season tickets. That still means an average of less than 1,000 fans at home games this year.

Maybe you see the throwback purity of Division II with its smaller spotlight. But Crutchfield just wants to do what he’s accomplished since arriving at Nova Southeastern: win.

NSU basketball had only one 20-win season in its 34 years when Crutchfield arrived in 2017. He won 17 games that first year and has won no fewer than 23 since.

The Sharks can move to 25-1 on Tuesday. They also can do what only one other team has done in college basketball — and that was 70 years ago. Crutchfield has his thoughts on whether anyone will get to 100 consecutive home wins again.

“A lot of records will be broken in today’s world,’’ he said, “but this one looks unbreakable to me.”

But you know what?

It still stinks, right to the end of celebrations this past week, when the official White House Tik-Tok account used artificial intelligence to transform American (and Ottawa Senators) center Brady Tkachuk into some Canadian-hating caricature of this administration’s imagination.

“They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple-syrup-eating f—- a lesson,” Tkachuk is made to say on White House’s social-media account.

If 12 million viewers were surprised he said this, imagine how Tkachuk felt.

“I’m not in control of those accounts,” he said. “I know those words would never come out of my mouth.”

It’s the oddest of times in America when our athletes are left to explain the wayward conduct of America’s leaders. They tried, too. They said the FBI director Kash Patel’s beer-chugging in the middle of the men’s team celebration was him, “just one of the boys,” though by Friday even President Donald Trump expressed disappointment over that behavior.

The president put the men’s team in another mess with his congratulatory, post-game phone call. He invited it to the White House, then dismissively added he’d have to invite the women’s team, too, or “I do believe I probably would be impeached.”

The players laughed, just as they’d been laughing and hugging and celebrating in the immediate aftermath of years spent working to win the gold medal. Were they to be on guard in that moment to catch the president’s needless jab at women? And then to get more criticism for their reaction than the president for his words?

The adults in the room were the U.S. women.

“I just thought the joke was distasteful and unfortunate,” team captain Hillary Knight said. “I think the way women are represented, it’s a great teaching point to really shine light on how women should be championed for their amazing feats.

“Now I have to sort of sit in front of you … and explain someone else’s behavior. It’s not my responsibility.”

Isn’t sports the easy and fun unifier? Shouldn’t our games show how we’re more alike than apart?

There can be a fun tapestry of sports and politics. Once upon a time, President Richard Nixon drew up a Super Bowl play for Dolphins coach Don Shula. It resulted in an incompletion, but it feels nostalgically naïve by today’s standards.

Even in 2013, when the 1972 Dolphins team went to President Barack Obama’s White House, a few players didn’t attend over Obama’s politics and that was fine. They had their say. The president celebrated those who came and ignored those who didn’t.

Now look at what’s happened. It’s not just an international star like Bad Bunny being turned into a political debate over something as harmless as a Super Bowl halftime show. It’s previously unknowns like Olympic skier Hunter Hess being targeted for saying he had “mixed emotions,” representing the United States.

“There is so much that is great about America, but there are always things that could be better,’’ Hess said.

One of the great things is being able to express yourself.

“U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it. Very hard to root for someone like this.”

Politics and the Olympics often intersect. They typically involve cases like Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych being disqualified for refusing to not wear a helmet honoring his country’s athletes killed in their war with Russia.

But we were pulled into an unnecessary political firefight after the U.S. men’s and women’s teams had memorable gold medal runs. Their overtime wins define everything good about sports. And then came the aftermath.

The men’s team took their invitation to Washington and then had to explain the White House’s Tik-Tok creations.

The women’s team declined their joking invitation and had to explain comments directed at them.

How did such fun turn into such fury?