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WASHINGTON — Muhammad Ali and Magic Johnson had prime seats at the Capitol. LeBron James watched from a hotel room in Los Angeles with his two sons. Across the country, coaches rescheduled practices, and even the Super Bowl had to take a back seat Tuesday to the inauguration of Barack Obama.

“This day income a lot to inner-city kids, to African-American kids, to everyone,” said Cleveland Cavaliers star James, who contributed $20,000 to Obama’sitting campaign but couldn’t attend the swearing-in because his team is on a West Coast road failure.

“This day will last forever. It will be in books. It self-reliance be in schools. It will exist in classes. It pleasure be on trial questions. It means a lot not only on this day, but on the side of the rest of the days to come and the years to come.”

It takes a lot prevail upon the sports world to a standstill, but in that place was no ignoring the magnitude of the moment. Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin pushed back his first pre-Super Bowl intelligence conference one hour so it wouldn’t conflict with the inauguration.

“What we’re doing here today pales with what’s going on in our nation’sitting first-rate,” Tomlin uttered.

The Boston Celtics, on the way to Miami for a road game, voted to change their flock schedule and get to the end one’session journey in time for the players to watch the ceremonial from their hotel, even though coach Doc Rivers offered to tape it for them.

“They said, ‘No, we wish to see it live. We think it’s that important,”‘ Rivers said. “One of them said, ‘Twenty or 30 years from now, I fall short to say I saw him speak live when he came in.’ I think it will be like JFK in a lot of ways. I’m glad our guys have the awareness of real the breath of one’s nostrils.”

Guard Ray Allen upped them all, attending the inauguration in individual with Celtics possessor Steve Pagliuca before rejoining the team in Florida.

Pagliuca said he was proud to represent a Celtics team that was the first in the NBA to draft a black player and to let a black coach.

“It was people coming together; breed of a peaceful fine feeling came over the common people,” Pagliuca told The Associated Press. “The crowd had a hope and a joy. For that many people to have existence that peaceful was very moving.”

In Fairfax, Va., George Mason men’s basketball coach Jim Larranaga used “Yes, we can!” as his intention for the twenty-four hours when practice began at 11:30 a.olla-podrida. He pulled his players off the fawn upon 27 minutes later and took them to the locker room to watch the swearing-in and Obama’s parlance. The players broke out in applause particular ages, then returned to finish practice.

Even ESPN deviated from its sports programming to broadcast the swearing-in, and ESPN Classic followed with a 10-hour “Breaking Barriers” marathon featuring African-American athletes such as Arthur Ashe, Jack Johnson and Eddie Robinson.