SAN FRANCISCO — The NBA suspended its season “until further notice” Wednesday night in the wake of a Jazz player testing positive for coronavirus.
And just like that, the league has gone from business as usual, to playing behind closed doors, to not playing at all.
“The NBA is suspending game play following the conclusion of tonight’s schedule of games until further notice,’’ the league said in a statement issued just after 9:30 p.m. ET. “The NBA will use this hiatus to determine next steps for moving forward in regard to the coronavirus pandemic.’’
With outdoors league such as MLB and MLS going forward, NHL taking a wait-and-see approach and college basketball still playing — albeit behind closed doors — the NBA is an outlier and the first to shut down due to COVID-19.
There may well be more, with the NHL expected to have further clarity on Thursday.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told ESPN the NBA has told teams they can continue to practice, and players have been told they should not have visitors from out of town.
“This is crazy. This can’t be true. Within the realm of possibilities this seemed more like out of a movie than reality,” Cuban told ESPN from courtside at the Mavs game.
“This is much bigger than just the NBA. … When we talk about getting the season back on track that means all this got worked out, that maybe we understand more about it and it��ll be less of an issue for the entire country, the entire world. So really that’s most important.”
With the coronavirus in more than 100 countries and the World Health Organization labeling it a pandemic, the NBA announced a shutdown that started after the completion of Wednesday night’s games.
NBA owners had discussed this exact possibility on a conference call earlier in the day, deciding between this and playing without fans. Everybody was in agreement to do one or the other, ESPN reported, except one team: The Knicks, who pushed for business as usual until the government intervened.
The Nets had been slated to play Golden State at Chase Center here on Thursday in the first NBA game without fans due to the coronavirus. But this suspension decision came after a Jazz player, reportedly All-Star center Rudy Gobert, tested positive Wednesday for the coronavirus, leading to Utah’s game at Oklahoma City being postponed moments before tipoff. The Pelicans-Kings game in Sacramento was also called off because one of the officials assigned to the game also worked a Jazz game earlier in the week.
Gobert’s lighthearted actions Monday are sure to draw attention in this new light.
After the NBA had closed its locker rooms to media, coaches and players were put at podiums at least 6 feet from the media. After speaking at Monday’s practice, Gobert proceeded to touch the table and every microphone on it, in what was intended as a show of fearlessness.
Now that Gobert has tested positive, it begs the question of who else came in contact with the table and the mics, and their potential exposure.
With players on the floor warming up Wednesday night in Oklahoma City, they were sent back to the locker room and fans eventually ordered to leave. Thunder guard Chris Paul went over to the Jazz bench beforehand asking what was wrong with Gobert, but was yelled at to leave.
Jazz and Thunder players were being quarantined at Chesapeake Energy Arena after the game was postponed, according to ESPN.
“I trust [commissioner] Adam [Silver],” Cuban said. “You know what, it’s really not about basketball or money. Literally if this thing is just exploding to the point where all of a sudden players and others have it, you think about your family.”