The Life Without NBA Basketball Due to Coronavirus Diary: Day 1

The 2019-20 NBA season was suspended on Wednesday, March 11 due to the increasing threat of novel coronavirus. In this diary, we reflect on what’s happened as we wait for basketball to return.

March 11, 2020, is a day that marks a turning point for the 2019-20 NBA season, major sports in the United States and possibly even how the world views the coronavirus pandemic.

In a span of 24 hours, the following things happened:

• The NCAA announced its decision to play its Men’s and Women’s basketball tournaments without fans in attendance
• Italian soccer club Juventus announced its defender Daniele Rugani had tested positive for coronavirus
• The NBA reached a general consensus that games should be played without fans in attendance for the rest of the season after a conference call with its board of governors
• President Donald Trump shut down flights from mainland Europe to the United States for 30 days
• Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced they have coronavirus
• An NBA game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz was postponed due to concerns over Rudy Gobert‘s illness, which was soon confirmed to be coronavirus
• The NBA immediately decided to suspend its season until further notice

All of this came after numerous sports leagues — in America and abroad — postponed or canceled games, restricted locker room access to only players and essential personnel, and several teams played games without fans in attendance.

Those who were curious about what a televised NBA game would feel like without a roaring crowd cheering after every play don’t need to trouble themselves anymore; those games are all suspended for two weeks at minimum, and it will probably be longer; for comparison, the Chinese Basketball Association suspended play in late January and plans to resume play in early April after about a 10-week layoff.

Most likely, it won’t be long before the other leagues follow suit, which means we are looking at the very real possibility of people working from home, children not going to school and a quarantined existence until this pandemic is dealt with … all without the usual, pervading presence of sports to distract us from the troubles of the world.

First and foremost, coronavirus is something that goes far beyond the narrow spectrum of sports and entertainment, and dealing with it is far more important in the grand scheme of things. There are people’s lives, health and access to affordable health care at stake, so as terrible as it is for NBA fans to go without basketball for a few weeks, it’s the right (and only) decision for the league to make. We can only hope, pray and send good thoughts to Gobert and anyone who’s been in contact with him and the Jazz lately, in addition to the other thousands of cases around the world.

Now, one could make the argument a hiatus should’ve been the plan before Gobert’s illness was confirmed to be coronavirus, but it took a dismal day like Wednesday, March 11, with gut punch after gut punch after gut punch in the world of sports, to get us here. It took widespread fear, reports from overseas about a professional soccer player testing positive for COVID-19 and the NCAA turning March Madness into March Sadness to really drive the point home.

Is that ideal? Of course not. The league was heavily criticized over the last few days for its desperate attempts to find an alternative solution in order to preserve money and avoid canceling or postponing games. Even playing games without fans in attendance would’ve cost the association millions, but until the prospect of a player coming down with the illness became a reality in Italy — and quickly materialized in the NBA — the reality of the situation wasn’t clear to everyone.

It should be abundantly clear now.

As juvenile and outright dumb as Gobert was for turning coronavirus into a joke by making a point of touching every reporter’s microphone and recorder at a recent shootaround, while addressing COVID-19, no less, the blame obviously cannot be placed squarely on his enormous shoulders.

This was bound to happen eventually as long as the NBA resisted suspending play, which might have allowed more time for medical professionals to fully get this situation under control.

Gobert’s immaturity is eye-opening in retrospect, but there’s no way anyone could ever prove that was the exact moment he contracted coronavirus from anyone else. It may, however, have been the moment he spread it to anyone attending that media availability session and anyone those people have been in contact with since.

On a more widespread level, Gobert’s epically backfiring gaffe also epitomizes how not everyone was taking this threat seriously. Not everyone anticipated how quickly the dynamic would change as soon as a single NBA player tested positive, and now the league is suffering the consequences, going into full lockdown mode in response to an outcome that was inevitable as long as it continued to dance around the situation and operate as usual.

Whether it was Gobert jokingly messing with mics or a lower-level employee forgetting to wash their hands, this was bound to happen eventually, and now everyone involved is at risk.

It shouldn’t have taken this long, but perhaps now the NBA, its players, its staff and its fans understand the gravity of the situation.

There’s a fine line between the crazies ransacking Walmart for toilet paper and hand sanitizer like they’ve never cleaned themselves before and the “cool” people laughing at them for doing so and not taking the situation seriously.

You’d think navigating that fine line — washing your hands with soap, coughing into your elbow, staying home if you’re sick, avoiding touching your face, etc. — would’ve been simple enough, but it appears the prevailing school of thought was to make a mockery of the whole ordeal. So here we are, with the NBA and the nation itself teetering closer to full-on quarantine mode after Wednesday’s events.

Gobert is not the first or even the biggest name to contract coronavirus, and he probably won’t be the last. But between him, Rugani and Tom Hanks, this issue now hits close to home for the NBA community, the U.S. sports community, the international sports community and the entertainment industry alike. People have a hard time relating to others’ suffering from a world away, but coronavirus has infiltrated all of that through some of our most beloved escapes.

March 11, 2020, was a wakeup call on many fronts, and without sports around for much longer to distract us, it’s time to start paying attention.

Novel coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease it causes, first emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019. To date, more than 115,000 cases and 4,200 deaths have been confirmed in more than 70 countries worldwide, including the United States. The World Health Organization declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on Jan. 30 and countries have implemented curfews, travel bans and mandatory quarantines to help prevent its spread. For more information about COVID-19, visit the CDC’s website or the website for your state’s Department of Health.