ORLANDO – The first time I was tested for COVID-19 was after spending hours in the bowels of the Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City on March 11, the day the NBA stopped.
Utah Jazz Center Rudy Gobert had tested positive for the coronavirus earlier in the night with the results returning just before the Jazz and Thunder were supposed to give notice. The game was canceled, the NBA season suspended. It didn’t seem real. I was scared.
I cried silently, fearing for myself and the people I had come into contact with, but soon I hid my fear and anxiety with anger and frustration.
In the visiting locker room of the arena, surrounded by Jazz players, Oklahoma health department staff and workers who donned robes, gowns, masks, face shields, and gloves, the deep nasal swab was a shock to the system, like everything that night.
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I did not sleep and everything seems blurry. We were all much less informed and less prepared for what was happening and what would continue to unfold in the coming months.
On Tuesday I was tested for COVID-19 a second time. This time it was in a ballroom at a luxurious resort-style hotel just outside Walt Disney World in Orlando. I put on a mask at the hotel, as I do everywhere I go these days, and an NBA employee greeted me with a temperature control in the lobby.
Once inside the large room where the tests would take place, probably used for wedding receptions and awards lunches when things were normal, I was asked for personally identifiable information, 6 feet away from a woman wearing the same outfit as the Department. of health workers at OKC. In quick order, I was taken to a second station where the test was performed, this time with a shallow nasal swab. Being examined was not a shock, it was a comfort and a sign of the security measures being taken. The whole experience was pleasant and easy and expected, the new standard was met at every step.
The juxtaposition of my experiences is no different than that of the NBA in general.
The league was not built to resist a pandemic. The suspension of the season was reactionary. It happened amid panic and at a time when the United States was just beginning to deal with the severity of the virus.
On Thursday, the NBA season restart comes from an incredibly detailed plan, months in the making. Instead of living in panic, the NBA has created an environment of safety and comfort in a world where masks and hearing things like “quarantine” and “antibody testing” are normal and not foreign to the ear. And, when the first jump ball is released for the NBA restart, the Utah Jazz will be on the court, once again as part of this historically bizarre season.
“Our game in Oklahoma City and being in that locker room, all the things that came with that and then the opportunity to be a part of the first game when we came back, in hindsight we will look back and understand that there is meaning there,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said.
“I think there has been a strong belief in our team that this is something that ultimately, as difficult as it was over a period of weeks and months, has become a unifying experience.”
From quarantine to bubble
The indefinite suspension of the NBA season was an unexpected shock, and when other major leagues and sporting events followed suit, it seemed that the world stopped without a return in sight. The return to action would be based on “data, not dates,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said at the time. A restart plan would require daily testing, continuous isolation, constant monitoring, and an understanding of how the virus spreads. It was going to take time, and the weeks and months dragged on.
Meanwhile, the Utah Jazz were at the epicenter of the basketball drama. Not only was it the team that will be remembered forever for the role it played in the close, but there was also concern over the relationship between Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz’s two most important and influential players.
Gobert’s diagnosis sparked fear, not only in me, but throughout the world of sports, and probably most notably in Mitchell. It makes sense to me that Mitchell was frustrated and angry when the next morning, on March 12, he learned that he was the second NBA player to test positive for COVID-19. Those are related emotions because this virus is deadly and at the time it seemed unpredictable.
“A lot of things happened, not just for us, but for every person on this planet,” Gobert said Wednesday. “It was a pandemic, sports were closed, many people lost their families, their lives.”
Isolated in different parts of the country, witnessing the tragedy of the virus in the news and on social media, the players tried to keep their attention away from themselves, but to no avail. Fans, experts, and reporters questioned whether the Jazz could advance with Mitchell and Gobert if they couldn’t reconcile.
So the Jazz main office, the players and those who would be speaking on the record tried to send the message that everything was fine in Jazz-land. The sentiment shared by those within the organization was correct, but until the two were on the court together, rumors of unrest would continue.
All of these messages were relaying as the league went into minute detail, trying to find a way to revive basketball. So as social distancing, self-isolation, Zoom gatherings, and wearing PPE in public became a way of life, the NBA bubble was born.
The NBA would head to Walt Disney World in Orlando, essentially creating an NBA summer camp in which a champion would be crowned in an empty arena.
Racial injustice protests
But, just as the plan was being seriously developed, protests against racial injustice erupted across the country. Players, coaches and executives in the NBA, representing a predominantly black league, felt a moral obligation to make the defense of equal rights part of the return of the league, which would take place in Florida, where the coronavirus, taking more lives every day.
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On Thursday night, when the NBA resumes the 2019-20 season at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World, it will do so on a court that prominently displays “Black Lives Matter,” in bold capital letters.
The Utah Jazz will enter the court to play a significant game for the first time since March 11, the day the NBA stopped.
The NBA will continue to evaluate players, coaches, and staff daily while in the bubble, hoping that its safety plan continues to work. The Jazz will do their best to make a deep run in the playoffs despite shooter Bojan Bogdanovic being sidelined after wrist surgery. Gobert and Mitchell will do their best to silence any doubts that the tension between them is in the past.
“It is okay for us to start,” Mitchell said. “It is certainly a great time, not just for us but for the league, and for us to get out there and show that we have overcome all the things that have happened.” We are all excited. It is definitely a historic moment for sure. One that we will never forget, for one. But two, it will be this game, and all the games, we will appreciate them more because we know it could stop at any time. “
In hindsight, we can see how lucky it was that the world of sports didn’t continue as if nothing was wrong. Gobert’s diagnosis was the first domino to fall into a sequence that potentially saved thousands of people from contracting the coronavirus. It is easier to see that as a positive side of the situation now, more than four months after the fact. But, in real time, it was hard not to be overcome by fear.
In the NBA, the new NBA, the rule of emotion and optimism. Players are interviewed through Zoom, wear masks when not on the court, and talk about social justice as they prepare for the resumption of the 2019-20 season on Thursday, and every day they start with a COVID-19 test of routine that is not a shock, but rather common.
