Soon, I promise, the talk again will be of the Lakers and Threepeating and Vince's Raptors and AI's Sixers and the never-dull Blazers and the amazing reassembly of the Kings and the new-look Hawks and the new-city Grizzlies and that Jordan Fellow.

But not now. Not yet.

Not in this city, where the Pentagon still smolders, so close -- a shuttle flight close -- to New York, a city that shares our outsized opinion of ourselves, our hubris, our power -- and, now, our grief.

I thought Sunday would be a strange day without professional football, especially in this city, where Sundays in the Fall are devoted to a near-universal love affair with the local football team, an affair that crosses all racial, economic, gender and class lines. There is nothing else that brings Washingtonians together, faster.

Well, at least there wasn't before last Tuesday.

But, strangely, the day was not odd to me at all. I went to church. I heard a moving sermon about that perfect love which drives out fear. I spent the afternoon eating, talking, laughing and arguing with my family, the first time I had been able to see all of them since the attacks. I did not think for one second about pro football. I did not miss it in the least. Maybe I will in a week, a month, a year. But this Sunday without sports was fine, just fine.

I know that sports have a therapeutic effect on a great many people. They are more than just games and diversions. They are a way for fathers to communicate with their children. They are a way for wives to communicate with husbands. They can teach kids some very important lessons about winning and losing, about teamwork and sacrifice. They are a way for different people to find out they share similar traits, like loyalty and enthusiasm. They provide economic benefit to some people -- present company included -- if not to cities generally. They are entertaining.

But I have felt, in the last few years, that sports have overgrown their place in our society, like a plant that begins to choke off others around it. Our national obsession with celebrity, with who people are as opposed to what they do, has distorted sports as well. The line between journalism and entertainment that has been blurred to the point of irrelevance is present in the sports world as well. The poisoning effect of big money has separated teams from their fans in so many corrosive ways. The numbing effect of highlights, over and over again, on television. The general coarseness of talk radio is reflected in its sports version, where every coach is incompetent, every player is overrated and overpaid and the last guy on the air was a moron.

We expect so much out of sports, and the athletes that play them. They, to the seeming exclusion of everyone else, should be role models. (Ignoring the fact that in many neighborhoods, the people that could be role models, the doctors and lawyers and contractors and teachers, are nowhere to be found. They don't live there. Leaving the kids some pretty poor choices to emulate.) They, to the seeming exclusion of everyone else, are supposed to provide the cathartic impulse that tells us it's okay to cheer, it's okay to root, it's okay to be "normal" again.

Well, maybe it's not okay.

I heard the debate last week over whether games should or shouldn't be played, and I still don't understand why anyone would expend one ounce of energy on it. If you needed the release of watching or attending a sporting event, fine. If you weren't yet ready, fine. But this either-or mentality that has poisoned our discourse made it seem like you had to have a "take," had to choose. And last week, I continue to maintain, was not the time to choose.

Recently there was some guy railing about the decision to cancel the Ryder Cup matches in England in two weeks. He did everything but call the U.S. golfers traitors. How could they not represent their country? How could they not use their talents to help the country heal?

How easy, for some anonymous blowhard who is no one's target, to be the arbiter of when we should and shouldn't be ready to get on with our lives.

Each one of us will get over this in his or her own time. Small steps. The stock exchange, back in business. Letterman, back on the air. BET, back to infomercials. And, yes, baseball and football, back in play. But if Letterman doesn't feel like doing a show in three weeks, it's okay. And if a quarterback says he's scared about traveling, it doesn't make him unpatriotic.

Our country has been shaken in such a profound, fundamental way. The members of my generation, the recipients of the peace dividend, have had to deal with our own personal ups and downs, loss of loved ones and the like. But let's be honest; for many of us, one of the bigger decisions was whether to order a grande or venti cappuccino. On a large scale, this is the defining event of our lives. I now know why gray-haired men and stooped-over grandmothers seem so melancholy. As Chris Rock says, they had to deal with real issues, real racism, real war.

Now, it is our turn.

I don't know when it will be all right to care about my slice again. I don't know when it will be all right to laugh out loud again. I don't know when it will be all right to notice a pretty woman at the gym again. I don't know when my heart will be in anything again. I don't know, I don't know.

But I think it's time to go back to work.