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Baxter Holmes
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Tim MacMahon
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Tim MacMahon
ESPN Staff Writer
- Joined ESPNDallas.com in September 2009
- Covers the Dallas Cowboys and Dallas Mavericks
- Appears regularly on ESPN Dallas 103.3 FM
NBA COMMISSIONER ADAM SILVER entered the Barclays Center in Brooklyn before the hometown Nets hosted the Detroit Pistons.
It was Chinese Cultural Night. The Nets players wore warmup shirts honoring the Lunar New Year, and the starting lineups were announced in Chinese. Traditional Lion Dancers were scattered throughout the arena. On the main concourse, fans could have their names written in custom Chinese calligraphy and enjoy nian gao desserts, also known as Chinese New Year rice cake.
Before the game, Silver stepped into the Diamond Lounge, a private room inside the arena, where a small reception recognizing local Chinese Americans, namely business leaders, was being held. The small space was crowded, with close to 50 attendees.
At the bar, Silver spotted a familiar face, Dr. David Ho, a renowned virologist who had consulted with the NBA in the early 1990s when Magic Johnson announced he had tested positive for HIV. It was Ho’s second Nets game at Barclays Center, and he had been personally invited by Nets owner Joe Tsai.
Ho — a professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York and the founding director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center — immediately recognized Silver. They greeted each other with pleasantries, but very quickly, with COVID-19 dominating the headlines, Silver broached a question.
“What do you think is going to happen?” Silver asked.
It was Jan. 29, 2020, a few weeks after Silver first heard about a virus spreading through China from colleagues in the league offices there, and six days after deciding to close those offices as a precaution.
Ho had first heard of the virus around Christmas 2019 from specialists in China with whom he had worked when he served as an adviser to the Chinese and Hong Kong governments during the SARS outbreak in 2002. During that time, Ho had traveled to China and Hong Kong.
“You would not believe how that region was affected,” Ho told ESPN. “You could go to Beijing and there would be no cars on the street.”
Ho didn’t know what kind of threat COVID-19 posed, but he knew that if the Chinese government was willing to lock down the city of Wuhan — home to 11 million residents and the site from which the outbreak was said to have begun — on Jan. 23, then the threat was serious.
Back inside the Diamond Lounge, Ho pointed out something Silver would never forget.
“If you notice,” he told Silver, “the restaurants in Chinatown are empty.”
Silver paused.
“The Chinese community in the U.S. are quite aware of what’s going on in China — much more than the general public,” Ho said. “And the Chinatown restaurants are a reflection of that. People are scared.”
The two talked for 15 minutes. Silver had already been concerned about the possibility of filling NBA arenas with nearly 20,000 fans, but the unemotional, matter-of-fact tone from Ho was striking. The next morning, on the same day the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global public health emergency, Silver called Ho and asked whether he would serve as a consultant for the NBA on COVID-19. Ho agreed.
The next day, Jan. 31, the league office sent out a memo to NBA general managers, team physicians and athletic trainers.
Six cases had been identified in America, it noted. It stated that the league was “closely monitoring the spread of a respiratory illness caused by a novel coronavirus.” It included links to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and recommendations about practicing good hygiene, including washing hands frequently with soap, avoiding close contact with people who were sick, and not sharing water bottles, towels, glasses or eating utensils.
The subject line: “coronavirus outbreak.”
BY EARLY FEBRUARY, Silver began buying extra toilet paper.
“My wife was laughing at me and saying, ‘Why are you doing this?'” Silver told ESPN. “I go, ‘This is what we’re talking about every day at work. It’s only toilet paper, but let’s get the extra toilet paper.’ She told me I was being an alarmist.”
On Feb. 15, Silver, David Weiss, then the NBA’s senior vice president of player matters, and John DiFiori, the NBA’s director of sports medicine, entered a hotel conference room during All-Star Weekend in Chicago. They were there for one of the annual meetings with the NBA Physicians Association. Dr. Lisa Callahan, the Knicks’ team doctor and the president of the physicians’ association, recalled the league’s leadership “really putting COVID-19 on our radar as a potential league issue.”
On Feb. 24, 27 and 29, the league sent out additional memos to teams, the last of which outlined the possibility of the virus spreading further. Teams were advised to consult with local infectious disease specialists, prepare to implement temperature checks on players and staff, and consult with local medical centers — especially for testing — in case anyone on a team showed symptoms of or was exposed to the virus. In early March, another memo provided “short-term recommendations,” including the avoidance of autograph signing and prioritizing fist bumps over high-fives.
On March 2, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr and members of his staff attended a concert in Denver the night before facing the Nuggets. They packed inside a small venue.
“Everybody was jammed together, and we were kind of sitting there wondering, is this OK?” Kerr told ESPN. “Are we supposed to be doing this?”
On March 6, the NBA sent another memo, preparing teams for the possibility of playing without fans.
Three days later, after returning from a four-game road trip, then-Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert prepared to speak to reporters after a morning shootaround in Salt Lake City. In advance of a home game against Toronto that night, Gobert sat at a table lined with microphones and recorders while reporters sat at tables several feet away — a league-encouraged effort to create social distance and limit potential spread.
After he spoke, Gobert rose from the table and turned to leave, then he paused, turned back to the microphones and playfully touched them and the recorders on the table. It was his way of saying that he wasn’t especially concerned about the spread of the virus.
THE NEXT DAY, March 10, members of the Jazz front office and their athletic training staff gathered for a 45-minute meeting about COVID-19 protocols at the practice facility. The meeting was led by the chief medical officer from the University of Utah. “We took it very seriously,” Mike Elliott, then the Jazz vice president of health and performance, told ESPN, “and wanted to make sure that we were prepared and that our athletes heard it from a reputable source.”
The team flew to Oklahoma City around 8 p.m. ET to face the Thunder the next night in a critical game for playoff seeding. Soon, Jazz players and staff realized that Gobert wasn’t feeling well and had begun experiencing symptoms earlier that day — “a little cold,” he would later tell ESPN. After the Jazz landed in Oklahoma City, Dennis Lindsey, then the executive vice president of basketball operations for the Jazz, received a call from Elliot, who told him Gobert wasn’t feeling well.
“In my mind,” Lindsey said of that call, “it’s like, OK, here we go.”
The Jazz were staying at the 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. After checking in, Eric Waters, then the Jazz’s head athletic trainer and director of medical services, visited Gobert in his room and found that Gobert was experiencing a fever with chills.
By 10 p.m. ET, the Jazz were on the phone with Dr. Jim Barrett, the Thunder’s team doctor. By 11:15 p.m., Barrett arrived at the 21c hotel.
“At the time, there was some question as to whether or not there were any COVID tests in Oklahoma, and if there were, there was an understanding that there weren’t many,” Elliott said. “So they weren’t just going to start passing out tests to us just simply because we were an NBA team, so we needed to have a bona fide reason for someone to administer one of those tests. The strategy was that they would test Rudy for strep throat, for influenza A and B and then administer a PCR-20 test [for 20 human respiratory viruses] to basically kind of rule out any other sort of virus, which would leave us to the point that we would need to mobilize one of those COVID tests.”
Around midnight, the team heard back that the tests for influenza and strep throat were negative. By 10 the next morning, Gobert’s PCR-20 test came back negative, too. The Jazz shared that information with their doctors and with the league office. Barrett had been in touch with Dr. Linda Salinas, who was from the infectious disease department at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center, and the state Board of Health decided Gobert should be tested for COVID-19.
By 9:32 p.m. on March 11, 2020, the NBA announced that a Utah Jazz player — later identified as Gobert — had tested positive for COVID-19 and that the league was suspending its season. Dr. Vivek Murthy, a former U.S. surgeon general who had also been consulting with the NBA on the virus, was home in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Alice Chen, and their two children, then ages 3 and 2. The TV was on, and they saw the news of the NBA’s decision. Murthy and his wife turned to each other. They didn’t say a word.
“Sports have always been an important part of American culture,” Murthy told ESPN then. “And when the NBA suspended its season, that was a powerful signal to people that something profound about our way of life is about to change.”
For many in America, that announcement marked the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that would kill more than 1 million Americans — a figure higher than the American death toll in the Civil War and World War II combined — and millions more around the world.
“That was a key moment in NBA history,” Ho said. “And as you look back, it clearly is a key moment in American history as well.”
On the fifth anniversary of that announcement, this is the hour-by-hour story of the key moments that led up to it, and the aftermath, in the words of those who were directly involved.
After leaving the airport in Oklahoma City, the Jazz arrive at the 21c Museum Hotel downtown. Reporters covering the Jazz are notified the team will hold its media availability for the shootaround the following morning, March 11, at the hotel instead of at the arena. Gobert doesn’t attend the shootaround, nor does Jazz guard Emmanuel Mudiay. Both are said to be feeling sick.
Mike Conley, then-Jazz guard: Initially when we got off the plane, we knew [Gobert] was sick and we were all joking like, man, he probably has COVID.
Donovan Mitchell, then-Jazz guard: I only noticed [Gobert] was really sick [because] we sit next to each other on the bus and the plane — right next to each other. And then after that, I didn’t see him the rest of the trip.
Jordan Clarkson, Jazz guard, to ESPN in 2020: I remember at the brunch after shootaround, our coaches and the training staff and our medical staff were all at one table literally just, like, in deep talks, and us kind of being like, “Yo, what’s going on?” We were kinda scared ’cause the information that we got from the team was like, “They were going to get tested for flu and everything else, first.” But they were like, “If somebody comes up negative with those, they’ll get tested for corona.” Emmanuel … I think he was positive for the flu or something. And I think Rudy tested negative on all those tests.
After Gobert wakes up that morning, he says he’s feeling much better and prepares to be tested for COVID-19.
At 10:59 a.m., Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in America, testifies before Congress about the coronavirus outbreak in America and issues a warning. “It is going to get worse,” he says.
Meanwhile, at approximately noon, then-Golden State Warriors president Rick Welts enters a meeting with then-San Francisco Mayor London Breed at City Hall.
Two days before, nearby Santa Clara County had banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people, and Warriors officials believed their games would soon be impacted, too. The Warriors are slated to host the Brooklyn Nets at Chase Center the next night, Thursday, March 12.
Welts: My pitch was like, just let us get through this one game tomorrow night and then whatever we have to do, we have to do, but we’ll figure it out. And [Breed is] just like, I can’t do it. And I’m like, what do you mean you can’t do it? She goes, well, the best advice I have is if you guys play the game, you’re going to have to do it with no fans in the building.
Welts presses the issue, but Breed doesn’t budge: All gatherings of more than 1,000 people in the city were going to be banned. In addition to the Nets game being played without fans, all events at the Chase Center would be canceled through March 21. After the meeting, Welts steps outside City Hall and calls then-Warriors GM Bob Myers to share the news.
Welts: There’s silence on the other end of the phone. And so he is like, “OK, get back here. We’ll go meet with the team when you get back.” So sometime between that call and arriving back, I called the league — just to put the league on notice: This is what we were going to have to do. I got back to the office.
The players are getting ready for practice. Bob and I went into the locker room. Bob says, “Rick’s got something to tell you.” And I say, “Guys, we get to play tomorrow night, but the city’s going to make us play in front of no fans.” And I can remember it probably was only 20 seconds, but it felt like about two minutes where people were looking at me — what does that mean? Playing in front of no fans?
And then honestly, the only person to speak up was Stephen Curry, who said, “OK, well, can we have our own playlist?”
At 12:24 p.m., the Jazz list Gobert as questionable with an illness.
At 12:26 p.m.: World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus officially declares COVID-19 a global pandemic. Soon after that announcement, then-National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts arrives at the NBA’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters for a 1 p.m. meeting with the league’s leadership, including Silver.
Five days before, Roberts had attended a New York Knicks–Oklahoma City Thunder game at Madison Square Garden. She had talked to then-Thunder power forward Danilo Gallinari, whose concern about Italy — and the virus — had only grown. “That’s when it occurred to me, this is not something that’s just a curiosity,” she told ESPN. “This has got to make its way to the U.S. So I knew it was coming at that point, I just knew it was coming, and I was worried to death.”
Roberts: I remember walking into the meeting — having consulted with our experts and my senior management team — and being prepared to demand that in the event any of our players tested positive that we had to shut down the games. By then, I was terrified of this thing. It was killing people all over the planet and clearly about to kill people in our country.
The notion of having these organized games, playing in these 10,000-plus [capacity] arenas with how many people were affected, was ridiculous. So I remember we all said, “OK, this is not debatable, this is not negotiable.” So when we walked in, we were prepared for a fight — and there was no fight.
Adam said, “Absolutely, we completely concur. We’re not going to have our people exposed. We’re not going to have our fans come out to watch us play and have them be in a position of potentially becoming infected.” So it was one of the easiest non-arguments.
Silver: Clearly, she was taking it incredibly seriously. I honestly don’t recall such a specific conversation — if we get one positive test, we’ll shut down — because that was not automatic. … So it wasn’t as if we had a preset plan in place — one positive test and we’ll shut down. But certainly we talked, we discussed all the different permutations.
Roberts: If Adam had pushed back, I would probably have been in the position of recommending our players stop playing. Just refuse to play.
Silver: I also raised with Michele at the meeting, given that those county and state orders were being discussed around the country, the possibility that we might be dealing with a hodgepodge of ordinances. And I think I raised with her … the possibility of taking a hiatus.
I think I had floated two weeks in which we would shut down the league as opposed to playing without fans. We would shut down the league, work with Dr. Ho, public health officials, doctors, other experts, and come up with presumably a safe set of protocols, both for our players and for our fans, on what the appropriate way would be to move forward.
At around 2 p.m., Leonard Giles, then the event manager at the Chesapeake Energy Arena, where the Thunder play — it has since been renamed the Paycom Center — receives what he’d later describe as “weird” requests from his managers. The Jazz, he is told, want to turn an auxiliary locker room inside the arena into a secondary interview room. Giles goes into the locker room, hangs curtains on the walls and, as requested, places extra hand sanitizer around the area. He suspects something is amiss.
Giles: I put two and two together and figure out we’re playing Utah. Rudy’s probably going to be here; they don’t want him to interview with everyone else. That’s not a normal request, so I knew it had something to do with COVID.
At 2 p.m., team doctor Barrett takes Gobert from the hotel to the University of Oklahoma Medical Center to be tested for COVID-19. They enter through a private ER entrance.
Elliott: We had to make it a very private thing, of course, and make sure that all the precautions were followed to keep other people safe as well.
The Jazz remain in touch with the league office and the Thunder about the situation.
Elliott: Dennis was able to have those conversations with his counterpart, Sam Presti. Later in the day, I was able to speak with my counterpart as well, who was Donnie Strack. We just wanted to make sure that everybody who needed to know knew, but also that we were able to maintain privacy for Rudy.
After being tested, Gobert returns to the hotel.
Elliott: We continued to share with him, “Hey, you’ve got to remain in your room. You cannot have any visitors.” Then it was the waiting game. Would it be four hours? Six hours? Eight hours? We weren’t really sure because they hadn’t done many of these tests yet in Oklahoma. We followed the typical game-day routine, where everybody heads over on the bus, minus Rudy and Emmanuel, and tried to prepare for a game.
Gobert: They told me they were going to get the results pretty quick, that I should be able to know before the game. So I took my pregame nap and everything. I was feeling much better. I was ready to play.
At 4:30 p.m. Silver joins a board of governors call with all 30 of the team owners.
Silver: We polled all the governors on the call. It was very important to me to get as much input as I could. So we gave a report on what we knew. And given, again, that there were unique things happening — city by city, county by county, state by state in the country — one of the purposes of the call was to get everyone’s take and what was happening and what they were hearing in their community.
But we did discuss on that call potentially taking a two-week hiatus. We certainly didn’t leave the call saying if we got one positive test, we would shut down.
At 6 p.m., Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has arrived home after a day of meetings when he receives a call from an official in the state’s Commerce Department. He is told that a company that is considering expanding in Oklahoma will have officials attending the Thunder-Jazz game later that night. Stitt is asked to attend the game and meet with them.
Stitt: So I changed my clothes, and I grabbed my 10-year-old son, Remington, and I said, “Hey, grab your basketball and your Sharpie and we will get some signatures.”
At 6:30 p.m., Giles calls over the radio for the doors to open at the Chesapeake Energy Arena. Fans begin pouring inside. The Jazz still don’t have word on Gobert’s COVID-19 test.
Lindsey: I am on the phone with the league and [Thunder GM] Sam Presti several different times giving him updates. Basically, it was, “Hey, no word yet.”
Ten minutes later, at about 6:40 p.m., after failing to receive Gobert’s test results in time for him to play, the Jazz announce he will be out.
Lindsey: The problem was that we couldn’t get the test back in time. So I was like, I can’t accept that, guys. You can’t tell me, given that we’re going to be in front of 18,000 people and the chances to spread this, you can’t tell me we can’t get this test in sooner.
At 7:50 p.m., with the game slated to begin at just after 8 p.m., Stitt is sitting in a first-floor restaurant inside the arena — meeting with officials from the company considering expanding in Oklahoma — when his cellphone rings.
Stitt: I look at it, and I just ignore it. And then I realized it’s my Department of Health director. So I said, “Excuse me, guys.” And I stood up and took the call, and he said, “Where are you at, Governor?” And I was like, “Well, I’m at the game. We’re about to tip off; the Jazz are in town.” And he’s like, “Oh, OK, well, one of their players came to town, got sick, we just tested him in our health lab and [the results came] back and he tested positive.”
At the same time, Jazz GM Justin Zanik, back in Utah, is driving home.
Zanik: I’m three minutes away from my house, and Dennis [Lindsey] calls me. And he’s like, “He’s got it.”
Stitt: At that point, a million thoughts are going through my head because at that point, I’m like, “Well, if he was exposed to the team and then if they’re in there and exposed, the whole stadium is going to get infected, and it’s going to be a huge issue and a lot of people are going to die.”
At 7:53 p.m., Elliott receives a text message from Barrett.
Elliott: I was sitting with [then-Jazz coach] Quin Snyder, just chatting before he was about to head out to the court, when I received those results. Then I immediately called Dennis Lindsey, who reached out to Sam Presti to share the news. When I was in the process of doing that, I got a call from Dr. DiFiori, who asked for a status update. I informed him of the positive test.
In New York, NBA executive Weiss is sitting in his office at the league’s Manhattan headquarters with DiFiori when DiFiori learns that Gobert has tested positive.
Weiss: I very quickly got down to the office of Rick Buchanan, our general counsel, and told him what was going on. He called Adam right then.
Silver: I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Our office is in Midtown. It’s not that long a drive, but I was in a town car going home from work that night, and I had gotten a call from Rick Buchanan, first, our general counsel. I remember I left the office around 7:30 that evening, and Rick called me, I don’t know, around 15 minutes later, because I was close to my apartment building, and he said, “We just got this positive test.”
And literally as I was on the phone with Rick — he was giving me some of the details about when the test was taken, who had taken the test, how we had learned it — on my cellphone, I then said to Rick, I got to go, [Thunder owner Clay Bennett] is calling me right now.
At 7:55 p.m., Stitt, Bennett, Brian Byrnes (a senior VP for the Thunder) and Chris Semrau (the general manager of the arena) gather in a conference room in the arena. Bennett calls Silver.
Silver: So I picked it up, and [Bennett] said, “What are we going to do?” And I think he said, “I’m here.” And I didn’t know the governor was with him. And I said, “Have you talked to the public health officials?” Because at that point, that’s who was conducting tests. And he said, “Well, the public health official reports to the governor. The governor’s standing right here with me. And we want to know, essentially, what’s your decision?”
I am trying to remember whether I said to him right on the spot or I called him back. I think maybe I just talked it through with Clay and I said, based on the discussion, Clay, that we had earlier today, I said, we got to call your game. And he agreed with that, but I think it was pretty clear he wanted me to make that decision.
For all the officials on the ground in Oklahoma City, as well as for Silver and the league office, the chief matter at hand becomes what to do about the sell-out crowd of 18,203 inside the arena.
Silver: We certainly didn’t want people to panic. Rudy Gobert was, of course, not in the building, but that wasn’t necessarily known to people and whether other players were potentially positive.
Back in the conference room, Stitt and Bennett discuss options.
Stitt: So me and him are just going, “How should we do it? How do we dismiss in an orderly fashion?” Because at that point there was hysteria, and I remember that was a big part of our discussion. “Do we tell ’em why the game is canceled? How do we disperse?”
I remember one of the guys in the room goes, “Well, we could pull the fire alarm and then everybody would leave.” And Clay Bennett goes, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” And so we go, “Well, let’s go get [Presti].” And so me and Clay, we walk down the hall. My 10-year-old is like, “Mr. Bennett, am I going to get any signatures on my basketball?”
And Clay’s like, “Remy, I’m going to get you all the signatures you want. You have no idea you’re making history here.”
On the court, players go through their warmup routines. As the starting lineups are announced, the players prepare for the game to begin. With minutes before tipoff, Bennett, Stitt and a few team officials meet in Presti’s office.
Rob Hennigan, then-Thunder VP of insight and foresight, in 2020: And I remember Sam just turning to Donnie [Strack, the team’s VP of human and player performance] and me and saying, “Don’t let the game start. Don’t let them tip the ball.”
At 8 p.m., Dr. Angela Dunn, then the state epidemiologist with the Utah Department of Health, is walking outside her home in Salt Lake City when she receives a text message from Utah’s then-Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox:
‘S—, give me a call.‘
Dunn: And I did. And he said, “Rudy tested positive for COVID and that it was all hands on deck.” So I went right back to the office, about 15 minutes away, and eight of us huddled in a conference room and immediately got Rudy’s phone number and started doing contact tracing.
At 8:10 p.m., Strack sprints onto the court, directly toward the officials.
Royce Young, then-ESPN reporter: The fact that it was Donnie was what kind of caught everybody off guard because people that knew who he was were like, “Hey, that’s the Thunder’s doctor. That’s not somebody that would normally be coming out and talking to a referee.”
Joe Ingles, then-Jazz forward: I played in the NBA long enough, no one’s running on the court in a suit.
As Strack runs on the court, Elliott and Lindsey are on the phone. Lindsey tells Elliott that he had just spoken with Presti and that the game will be on hold. Elliott begins making his way through the hallways of the arena toward the court. Then he sees Jazz trainer Waters, and Elliott tells Waters that he needs to call Gobert, who was back at the hotel, to tell him the results of Gobert’s COVID-19 test.
Gobert: I know I’m not going to play. And then I’m turning on the TV and I see somebody running on the floor. And as that’s happening, my phone rings and the trainer [Waters] is telling me the results — as the guy is running on the floor.
Then-Thunder coach Billy Donovan, in 2020: And as that happened, Rob Hennigan, he came running across the floor.
Hennigan and Strack meet with the officials, Pat Fraher, Mark Lindsay and Ben Taylor.
Hennigan, in 2020: Donnie and I got with the officials and just explained the situation. The officials were totally wide-eyed.
As Strack ran onto the court, Giles receives a call over the radio, asking him to come onto the floor.
Giles: I went on over to the scorers’ table and met with the gentleman that was pretty much calling the game on behalf of the Thunder and the officials. The official asked me did I have the ability to talk to staff over the radio. I told him yes. He said, “We’re on the line with the NBA right now. More than likely we’re going to have to suspend the game and we’re going to need to evacuate the arena.”
Giles and his staff practice building evacuations twice a year, but in his five years with the team at that point, they’d never had to do it in a live scenario.
Giles: At the time, I had a 2-month-old baby at home. I knew I had been in some spaces that Rudy may or may not have gone throughout the day. So there’s a ton of things going through your mind at that time. We’ve talked about a “code orange” or whatever we might need to do to evacuate the building. And we’ve talked about it throughout the day if we get to that point.
But until you get to that point with 20,000 people in the arena and you’re about to go over the radio and tell all of your managers and supervisors to switch to another channel and you give that call — until you’re at that point … your heart is pounding, hands are sweating and you’re doing the best you can to keep it all together.
Lynnda Parker, then-chief of clinical services at the Oklahoma City-County Health Department, is home with her son, who is watching the pregame. Parker notices the delay.
Parker: Within minutes of [Strack] running on the court, I got a call from our director asking if I had nurses that could be ready to go down to the arena and test players.
Mitchell: When they came out, I wasn’t thinking like, “Oh, Rudy’s sick. This is COVID.” It was, “Something else is going on.” I was like, “All right, there’s a shooter?” because the way they all ran out, NBA security. But then we were just sitting there and no one’s telling us to evacuate and kind of just talking about the idea, and then [Chris Paul] was like, “What’s wrong with Rudy?” And that’s when I was like, “Oh s—, this is real.”
Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt: It’s as if God wanted to get our attention because you could not have picked a more dramatic way for it to occur.
Gallinari: And all of a sudden the three refs walk back to the scorer’s table. We are still on the court waiting for tipoff. Usually if something happens, one ref goes back to the table, but when I saw all three going back, I had a feeling. … But then we waited there and they didn’t tell us anything. Then they just told us, “Go back to your locker room.”
At 8:14 p.m., players from both teams rush back to their respective locker rooms. As Jazz players wave to the fans, intermittent boos rain down from the crowd.
Gallinari: We went back to the locker room, and they were not telling us what was going on. They kept telling us, “We don’t know if they’re going to cancel the game, so just stay ready.” So there were people stretching, people dribbling the ball in the locker room. People went back to the weight room to stay loose. Nobody was telling us anything.
Silver: Once the teams went back to the locker room, Chris [Paul] started calling me and saying, “Adam, we’re being told we can’t leave the locker room.” It didn’t surprise me, but I think maybe he was the first person to tell me that. And the reason, as I understand it, they weren’t allowed to leave the locker rooms — neither they nor the Jazz — [was] because the head of public health in Oklahoma City was saying, these players cannot leave until we’ve had an opportunity to test them.
I know, because Chris kept calling me every 15 minutes saying, “Adam, we are still not able to leave here. Can you arrange for them to bring more water and maybe some more food into our locker room?”
So I was sitting in my apartment, going back and forth with Chris, going back and forth with our office. And so he was giving me a blow-by-blow on what was happening on the ground. And I think also because he was head of the players’ association, the Utah Jazz players in their locker room also kept reaching out to Chris saying, “Chris, what’s going to happen to us tonight?”
As the court empties, an uneasiness settles over the crowd.
Semrau: It was very confusing. They didn’t know if they should be worried or boo or be disappointed or what was going on. Nobody knew what was going on. The crucial decision was made very quickly, that we need to make an announcement and we need to postpone the game.
To stall, the Thunder asked their mascot and hype crew, the Storm Chasers, to entertain the crowd. The team also asked Frankie J, a Grammy-nominated artist who was the evening’s halftime entertainment, to go onto the court.
Hennigan, in 2020: I don’t know, that may have been one of the first pregame halftime shows in NBA history, and he did a heck of a job with it.
As the delay unfolds, Stitt and Bennett remain in their courtside seats.
Stitt: I just remember the look on Clay Bennett’s face. That’s his team. He owns the team and I just remember his wife just trying to comfort her husband, and she knew and we knew that the announcement was going to happen. Everybody’s still thinking the game’s going on, the fans are in there and they’re eating popcorn and ready to root on their home team, and we just knew it was all going to come crashing to an end. Then I’m wondering, “Are they going to panic?”
Holt: You have to put yourself in the mindset of March 11, 2020. People thought of COVID-19 like the Black Plague. So if you were told that you were in a hotel and somebody else in that hotel, even though they’re in their room, has COVID-19, at that moment in time, you didn’t know if you were going to make it ’til morning. And there were similar feelings for the 18,000 people in the arena.
Semrau: During that pocket of time, that 8:14 to 8:36 window, that was when I think the discussions were taking place in the back of house area of what to do next, how to do it safely, how to communicate effectively. All of those things were being determined in that window.
Trying to safely, orderly and effectively mobilize 18,000 people to leave an event they just arrived at was a concern, but the objective. And so the script was quickly created and delivered at 8:37 to Mario Nanni, the Thunder public address announcer, to make the announcement:
“Fans, due to unforeseen circumstances, the game tonight has been postponed. You are all safe. And take your time in leaving the arena tonight and do so in an orderly fashion. Thank you for coming out tonight. We are all safe.”
Giles: As soon as Mario got on the microphone to make the announcement, I jumped on the radio, gave the call for the code orange to evacuate the building. I think we evacuated the building completely in 19 minutes, 22 seconds.
Donovan: Our guys were hoping we were going to play. And we waited for a little bit and then obviously they told us it had shut down. And I said to the guys, “Listen, we missed our game today. We’ll scrimmage tomorrow, so practice tomorrow, 11 o’clock.”
Gallinari: They told us, “OK, the game is canceled, but you guys cannot go home yet.” So we stayed in a locker room and we were like, “OK, can we take a shower? What can we do?” And they told us, “If you want to take a shower, take a shower, but you cannot leave the room.” Some people kept lifting, some other people took a shower. I got into the shower, I got myself ready to go back home.
Donovan: They made us leave a special way out of the building. You could not walk past Utah’s locker room.
Giles: Once everyone is out of the building, we immediately started receiving cancellations. And I do mean immediately. I think I got a call from the Harlem Globetrotters, who were supposed to play later that week, within the hour saying that they weren’t going to be able to make it. Cher was supposed to perform the next night. And of course she canceled within the hour.
Parker: I called some of my nurses, I think I got five or six. We were supposed to go in through the back loading dock. All we knew was that we were being called to test some of the players. And at that time, we didn’t have the testing supplies; the state did. So first, I picked up one of my nurses. I went over to our office and picked up whatever [personal protective equipment] we had: N-95 masks, some gloves, hand sanitizer, all the things I could find. We were supposed to go through the loading dock and that someone would meet us there.
Soon after the game is canceled, Dunn and her colleagues begin examining recent footage of Gobert, including when he’d touched the microphones after shootaround that Monday and when he high-fived fans as he left the court that night after the game.
Dunn: We didn’t even know how COVID really spread or how serious it was to individuals, especially kids. And so I started off by calling Rudy and trying to understand everyone he had come into contact with and what his timeline was.
The call with Gobert lasts 45 minutes.
At 9 p.m. ET, the Jazz receive notice that Oklahoma medical officials will mobilize nurses and testing kits and testers to the arena to test all 58 members of the team’s traveling party.
At 9:01, President Donald Trump addresses the nation about the threat of COVID-19 and announces travel restrictions for 26 European nations.
At 9:14, Tom Hanks posts on Twitter that he and his wife, fellow actor Rita Wilson, have tested positive for the coronavirus while in Australia.
At 9:15, Dr. Lisa Callahan, the Knicks’ team doctor, is in a Florida restaurant celebrating her husband’s birthday.
Callahan: My phone just starts blowing up and I have all these messages about what’s happening in Oklahoma.
Callahan calls Knicks owner Jim Dolan and Knicks president Leon Rose, who is with the team in Atlanta.
Callahan: The team was supposed to travel. And we were just like, “No, look, just sit tight, stay in Atlanta. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, but you definitely don’t have a game tomorrow to travel to. So stay in Atlanta. We’ll get a flight back to New York tomorrow.”
Back in Oklahoma City, Gobert remains at the 21c Museum Hotel while players for the Thunder and Jazz remain in their respective locker rooms.
Paul, from the 2021 documentary he executive produced, “The Day Sports Stood Still”: Immediately, what do you start doing? You start thinking about the fact that, “OK, he’s on that team, right? So does that mean everybody else on that team has it?” You start thinking about the interactions that you had with their team.
At 9:27, Shams Charania tweets that Gobert had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Conley: Then we found out he had it. It was like, this is crazy … that means it’s been here around us for a while. So now we’re all checking ourselves and like, “Oh my God, am I sick? Yeah, do I have shortness of breath?” You just start to panic a little bit.
Gobert: So [my agent, Bouna Ndiaye] calls me right after I tested positive. It’s all over Twitter, so a lot of people check on me, see if I’m doing OK. It’s pretty scary. And then my mom was still asleep. She was in France, but she was supposed to fly on Friday. So just as soon as she woke up, I really wanted to talk to her first before she got super scared, letting her know that I was OK. At that time, I didn’t know and I didn’t want to put her in danger or anything, so I canceled her flight and then it was the last day that we could fly internationally for a while.
At 9:32, the NBA announces that a player on the Utah Jazz — it doesn’t name Gobert — has preliminarily tested positive for COVID-19. It notes that the affected player wasn’t in the arena and states that the league is “suspending game play following the conclusion of tonight’s schedule of games until further notice.”
Fauci, to ESPN in 2020: It’s, “Oh my god.” The NBA is such an ingrained part of American culture that it almost is sacrosanct. To be able to suspend that means something really, really serious is going on.
Silver: I was very aware, given that we had such limited information, that it wasn’t clear whether we were, in fact, even making the right decision.
Roberts: The amount of money at stake was substantial. The money was ridiculous in terms of what we were going to lose. But again, OK, you can’t spend money if you’re dead.
The league’s announcement doesn’t mention other games still in progress. In Atlanta, the Knicks and Hawks are still playing. The Hornets and Heat are still playing in Miami. The Nuggets and Mavericks are still playing in Dallas. And there is another game that hasn’t even tipped off yet, between the New Orleans Pelicans and the Sacramento Kings in Sacramento, California. That game — the final one of the evening — is slated to begin at 10:30 p.m. ET.
Silver: The initial decision was, let’s let those games play out.
Soon after the NBA’s announcement, Silver receives a call from Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé.
Silver: He called me and said, “What are you going to do about our game?” I remember I said, “Let me get back to you.”
In Dallas, the second half begins between the Mavericks and Nuggets. Then-Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is sitting courtside.
Cuban: Before our game, [I remember] going into the locker room and talking to players and them asking me what was going on. And I remember Luka [Doncic] specifically asking me if I thought the season was going to be canceled, because I think they had canceled some games in Europe already. And I told him, “No, I don’t think so, but there’s probably, I would bet, a 50-50 chance that something happens.” And everybody’s like, “OK, well let’s go play this game.”
Monte Morris, then-Nuggets guard: At halftime we found out the league was going to shut down and then we just finished the game. But it was kind of weird. It was like we weren’t playing for anything.
When the NBA makes its announcement, a Mavericks PR staffer approaches Cuban and shows him his phone. Cuban’s jaw drops at the news, and he sits back in his chair — a moment that quickly goes viral.
Cuban: Obviously, I was in shock. There were two pieces. One, I wanted to win the game. Two, it turned out to be [Dallas center] Boban Marjanović’s best game ever. And so the players knew because I had shown players and said things and told Rick [Carlisle], our coach. Guys’ minds were elsewhere, but Boban went off. He was killing it. I just say it really took people’s minds, players’ minds off of it.
Marjanović finishes with a career-high 31 points and 17 rebounds. The Nuggets are scheduled to fly to San Antonio for a game against the Spurs, but instead they fly back home to Denver.
Mason Plumlee, then-Nuggets center: I remember we were on the plane. Somebody started coughing heavily and [then-Nuggets forward] Paul Millsap looked at him like, “Hey, take your ass to the back.” Everybody was on the edge every time somebody coughed after that.
At 10:22 p.m., the Jazz announce that shortly before tipoff, a preliminary positive test result had been returned on one of their players — they didn’t name Gobert — and that the player is currently in the care of health care officials in Oklahoma City.
Young: We didn’t really know until toward the middle of the night that Gobert was never even there. We all kind of thought that he had come to the arena.
At 10:30 p.m., members of the state health department arrive at the arena.
Mitchell: I’m freaking out. I’m like, “All right, what the hell’s going on?” Then they tell us that we’re getting tested.
Parker: My nurses, we had not ever done COVID testing before. So we were gathered around a phone watching a training tutorial so that when supplies came, we’d be ready. They had sent the Oklahoma City Thunder team home, so they weren’t there.
Oklahoma City health officials believe that because Thunder players weren’t directly exposed to Gobert, they aren’t at a significant risk.
Gallinari: They told us, “OK, we’ve got to measure your temperature. If you have a regular temperature, then you can leave. If your temperature is too high, you’ve got to stay.” Nobody had a high temperature, so we just went home.
Parker: It was just the Utah Jazz that were being tested. We went into the locker room and tested players, and some of these men were quite loud about the long nasal swabs.
Mitchell: That was the first test, but [the nasal swab] is f—ing up here [pointing to the middle of his forehead]. Remember the test that went all the way up to the head?
At 10:32 p.m., the Hawks and Knicks finish their overtime game in Atlanta, a 136-131 Knicks win. News of the league’s announcement had spread before the game ended, and the crowd chants, “We Want Vince!” Carter is sitting on the bench.
Carter, on ESPN’s “Hoop Collective” podcast: [Hawks center] Dewayne Dedmon sat next to me and he said, “Vince, do you realize this might be your last game? This could possibly be your last game.” I said, “Yeah, that’s crazy.” And as I sat there for like two minutes, I was like, “Damn, this might be my last game.” So now, we’re standing up. They’re chanting again, they’re pushing it. At like a minute and a half [remaining], LP [coach Lloyd Pierce] looks over, and I was like, “All right, cool, I’ll go in.”
With that, 43-year-old Vince Carter, in his 22nd season, checks in with 19.5 seconds remaining in overtime.
Carter: “I go in and everybody’s cheering. It was a cool moment. As I got to the table, I was like, “Damn, this might be my last game for real.” So when I got in the game, I’ll never forget, the first thing Trae Young said was, “I’m going to throw you a lob.” I said, “Hell no, you’re not throwing me a lob! Do you know how long I’ve been sitting on that bench over there? Hell no! Are you crazy? I’m 43 over here. I need time to warm up.”
The Knicks back off him as he launches an uncontested 26-foot 3-pointer with 13.4 seconds left.
Carter: If you watch it, people are kind of backing off. So that is more pressure. It’s like that open shot that you get sometimes where you’ve got to take the dribble. In my mind, I’m like, ‘Shoot this like it’s the second quarter.’ Don’t think of the fact that you’ve been sitting there forever and this could be your last shot. So I kind of stepped into it, shot it as if I was on fire and it went in.
That’s why I did this [pressed palms together and looked up] and said, “Thank you, thank you!” … That’s why I was at peace with my career ending that way, more so than everyone else, which I’m very appreciative of. Because I can’t imagine how miserable I’d have been the following year — my career over, ending on a miss that they let me shoot. But I made it, and I was kind of at peace at that point.
At 10:38 p.m., Andrew Lopez, the ESPN reporter covering the Pelicans-Kings game, tweets that players from both the Pelicans and Kings have expressed concerns to the league office about playing the game and are heading back to the bus.
J.J. Redick, then-Pelicans guard, to ESPN in 2020: “Everybody was just like, “Nah, we’re not playing. It’s not going to happen tonight.”
Lopez: Some of the Pelicans players were a little iffy about [playing]. So they raised the question in the locker room. I remember hearing some whispers like, “Man, they’re not going to play.” I remember standing in the tunnel waiting and there was 15-16 minutes on the clock before tipoff, and the Kings came out. Now I’m standing in the tunnel by the Pelicans’ locker room, and I remember somebody — [Pelicans president of basketball operations David] Griffin — coming out of the locker room and just giving us [a look], and that’s when I was like, “Oh, we’re not playing.” And then everything got weird after that.
With minutes before tipoff, the NBA announces the game is canceled “out of an abundance of caution because one of the referees assigned to work in the game also worked a Utah Jazz game earlier this week.”
Redick, in 2020: Leaving the arena was just the weirdest thing. I’ve got security on one side of me and another player on the other side and there’s fans trying to come over and talk to us. We’re like, “Don’t touch us. Don’t come near us.” It was the first time in this whole thing where you realize, like, “We’re going to be separated from people for a while.”
When we get to the hotel, we order a bunch of wine. We’re all sort of trying to decompress and come down. We’re all scared. We’re all on edge, to be honest with you. And at that point for those 2½ hours, it was a lot of phone calls. It was a lot of texting; my wife texting me. She’s like, “I’m really scared. I’m really scared. I need you to get home. I need you to get home.”
We were supposed to go to Utah next, and once we realized we weren’t going to play, then it became, “Can we leave now? We all want to get home now. We need to get back to our families now.”
Fans in Sacramento boo the decision to cancel the game. At this point, the entire league is on hold.
Silver: I think it was unclear whether we would have arenas full of fans, but at least at that point we were still thinking that we would return to the playing of games in two weeks. I think a few days later, I moved that to 30 days. At some point I said it’s going to take us at least 30 days to get a handle on the situation, that certainly we won’t be playing again before 30 days.
Roberts: I remember having a couple of calls from wives of players, from moms of players wanting to have me say they’re not going to be exposed in any way. And I assured them that to the extent I had the power, they wouldn’t be. But people were scared to death. I mean scared to death — even as young as they were. I mean, I remember thinking these guys were initially not taking it seriously because the word was if you’re over 55, you’re going to die. It’s a bad cold.
But as more people began to die and the numbers didn’t necessarily reflect that, people began to become more frightened and players were saying, I love the game, I love that I can make money, but it’s not worth dying for.
Meanwhile, the Jazz remain quarantined in their locker room.
Mitchell: Chris sent us a bunch of bottles of wine. I want to say maybe two or three [hours after they went to the locker room]. The arena was clear. You could walk around the arena, and it was just us. So we ended up drinking wine, and we’re just drunk. We’re just like, there’s nothing else we can do. We’re here.
Royce O’Neale, then-Jazz forward: That might be what saved everybody because being in that locker room for five, six hours, I don’t know what we were going to do. There’s only so much food, snacks and water and Gatorade we can drink.
Conley: You’re trying to relax your nerves a little bit. You really didn’t know how we’re getting out of this situation. There was so much uncertainty. So just wait around and watch movies on your phone and try not to panic, try not to think the walls are closing in.
At 11:26, the Oklahoma City Health Department tweets that those who are in the arena “are not at risk. #COVID19 is spread through respiratory droplets. Only individuals who are in close contact would be at risk.”
While the Jazz sit in the locker room, Jazz officials, along with those at the league office, work to make plans on where to stay for the night — and how to leave.
Weiss: Our first hope was to be able to get the team home. There were some members of the flight crew who were uncomfortable flying with the Jazz on the plane, so it became clear pretty quickly that a flight that night wasn’t going to be possible.
Dunn: My role became, how do you get them back to Utah? And nobody would fly them. So they had a contract with Delta, and I was on the phone with their medical directors — and people were scared. Pilots didn’t want to fly an entire exposed team from Oklahoma to Utah. And so it became really, really contentious trying to figure out how to get them home.
I have no idea why all of a sudden that became my job, but they were like, Angela, call Delta, get them a flight home. My role there really was, how could I help the pilots and the flight attendants feel comfortable being on a plane with exposed individuals. So, what PPE would they have to wear? The recommendation was full PPE. So that means you’re wearing a mask, you’re wearing goggles, you’re wearing gloves. And for a pilot to do that who isn’t a medical pilot, you can imagine why there was some resistance to putting themselves in that potentially risky situation.
So my job was to really advise them, advise the flight personnel on what personal precautions they should take in order to keep themselves safe. And I don’t know what negotiations went on to ultimately get the flight chartered and get them back to Utah. But I remember waking up in the very early morning the next day to tons of messages and text messages saying, “We think we found a plane. Can you please talk to the pilot and the flight attendants about what they should be wearing so that we can get them out?”
Gobert remains at the 21c hotel. Mudiay is also there. While he had tested positive for a common cold earlier that day, there’s concern among Jazz personnel that he could also be positive for COVID-19, so they make a decision to keep him isolated too while they wait for Gobert’s test results to return. Mudiay would test negative later that night. But word had gotten out that Gobert, who was positive, was in the hotel.
Holt: Over at the 21c, you had guests panicking. The lobby was starting to fill up with guests, and I think we sent the police over to sort of bring some calm to the situation.
Silver: At one point, I remember Sam [Presti] was arranging to put cots on the arena floor because we weren’t sure where these guys could go. And I can’t stress enough just how much uncertainty there was. In that moment, nobody really had any sense of how dangerous this virus was, how contagious these players might be, how much at risk they were if they did get coronavirus. So we were all sort of operating in the dark.
Holt: That night, I started getting calls about the Jazz from multiple places. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe’s office is calling me because they’re getting contacted by Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s office. The governor’s office is calling me because they’re getting contacted by the Utah governor’s office. And then finally Sam Presti called me and said, “We really got to find a place for the Jazz to stay.”
In moments of crisis, if you don’t know who to call, you call the mayor. So I got sort of enlisted as a travel agent. I remember calling the head of the Convention & Visitors Bureau — and it’s pretty late at this point; I mean, at this point it’s like 11 or 12 — and enlisting his help to try to find a hotel.
Silver: There were obviously a lot of hotels that didn’t want to take a team that potentially had positive players. People were scared, understandably.
Weiss, at the league office, is on the phone with Holt. Eventually, they find 47 rooms, split between a La Quinta and a Residence Inn about 10 minutes from the Oklahoma City airport.
Gobert, meanwhile, remains overnight at the 21c Museum Hotel.
Holt: Sen. Romney called me on my cell and thanked me personally for helping get the Jazz a hotel that night and for taking care of them.
At 2:14 a.m., the Jazz depart the arena on buses and head to the hotels near the Oklahoma City airport.
Mitchell: And then we were at a Residence Inn and just kept drinking beers and eating ice cream, and that was it.
Elliott: There was a lot of conversation. There was a lot of McDonald’s. There may have been some beverages in the lobby, and there were just a bunch of people that were shocked at what had happened and weren’t sure what was going to happen moving forward.
Ingles: I don’t think we really slept that night.
At 2:45 a.m. ET, NBA players receive a five-page memo from DiFiori, the NBA’s director of sports medicine, and Joe Rogowski, the NBPA’s chief medical officer. The memo is also sent to NBA team presidents, general managers, team physicians and athletic trainers.
The subject line: “Coronavirus — player health.” The memo begins, “In light of the recent news regarding the Utah Jazz player who has preliminarily tested positive for ‘coronavirus,’ and the announcement that the league is suspending game play until further notice, the purpose of this memo is to follow up with important health-related information.”
Weiss: One of the things we did know is that it was important to communicate with everybody what we knew and what we didn’t know, and quickly.
By the morning of March 12, Jazz players still don’t know their test results.
Ingles: We weren’t meant to share the results, but we had our group text of, “As soon as you get the result, let us know.”
At 9 a.m., Elliott receives a call from team doctor Barrett about Mitchell.
Elliott: I informed Dennis [Lindsey] and Quin [Snyder] of the finding. We arranged a meeting in my hotel room. It was Quin and myself and Becca [Ward, the Jazz’s VP of coaching and logistics]. I asked Donovan to come in, and as soon as I asked him, he was like, “I tested positive?” I was like, “Well, just come in. Let’s have a discussion here.” And he came in, we shared the news with him.
Mitchell: We had a team group chat. We were like, “Hey, I’m negative.” “Hey, I’m negative.” I just wrote back the plus sign.
Elliott: He was obviously unhappy, as you can imagine.
Mitchell: That was when it really was like, “F—.” Because I had just been with my mom. I was just in New York, so half of the school, Greenwich Country Day, friends, family [might have been exposed]. I had dinner with a bunch of my friends before we came back to Utah. Remember we played that one game against Toronto at home before we flew out.
So we did the whole East Coast trip. I had dinner, so I was like, “Holy s—, my family’s in jeopardy. My mom, my sister, my friends. Holy s—, I could die.” All these different things. That was when I was really messed up. This could really be it — for myself, for my mom. She’s older.
Gobert: As soon as I found out, I reached out to him and texted him, tried to call him. No answer, no response. I had Mike and some of the guys checking on me, and then the next thing I saw was Donovan’s post on Instagram.
Mitchell: I don’t remember texting him back at all. I didn’t talk to him for a while. He was kind of playful while being sick. And now we know I could have given it to him. He could have given it to me. We know that, obviously. But he was very playful. You know what I mean? So I didn’t appreciate that.
I’m like, “Yo…” The thing with him was, you know anything more about science and s— than anybody else. So I’m like, “You knew the severity of it.” I’m not saying that incident caused it, but you know what I mean. We sit next to each other. So for me, I was just angry. I was like, “Bro, this isn’t a f—ing game.” You know what I mean?
But he texted me. I definitely didn’t respond. I don’t remember when we spoke after that. I had done interviews. He had done interviews. I was angry. Once my family was involved with the life part of it, I was like, all right, that’s everything to me. Basketball, I didn’t give a f—.
Meanwhile, the Jazz continue to try to arrange travel to get home. The players and staff who had tested negative fly home on an NBA Delta charter flight on March 12.
O’Neale: On the flight back, it was spread out. Nothing too crazy. Not everybody overthinking. It was just more like, all right, we get to go home, get out of here.
Lindsey: We obviously couldn’t put Rudy on the plane, couldn’t put Donovan on the plane. They were going separate places [with Mitchell going back to Connecticut]. It was a good day and a half where literally I didn’t sleep just to get everybody the logistics plan and everybody accommodated.
Gobert, meanwhile, flies home March 12 on a separate plane, while Mitchell flies on a private plane to Connecticut.
Gobert: I was able to get on a medical plane. It really felt like it was out of a movie. The guys came in the hazmat suits to get me at the hotel. I was the only person in the hotel. They cleared out the rest of the hotel. Just me, and there were two medical people in hazmat suits. It was protocol.
Holt: Actually to this day, I’ve never really understood exactly when he left or how he left. But I remember asking for days like, “Is Rudy Gobert still here?”
Gobert: I got home. My private chef at the time, her name is Kris, she’s amazing. She came to my house, she was doing the laundry, she was making food and doing everything. And then my friend Fred, when he found out, he was like, “Dude, I’m going to fly to Utah just to support you, be there with you.”
When the team and Gobert land back in Salt Lake City, Dunn meets them at the airport, with members of her team. The Jazz players and staff enter an airport hangar and sit in a semicircle as Dunn addresses them.
Dunn: I was talking to them about their exposure and what to expect moving forward. What did it mean that they were exposed? What was the timeline, and what symptoms should they be looking out for? They were all concerned about the risks to their families. There were players whose wives were pregnant or they had little kids. There were players who lived with their elderly parents. And so they were really concerned about the risk that they were posing to their families and their loved ones.
My role was to educate them on that and to also make sure they were following rules. I mean, you kind of forget, at least I do, these are young kids for the most part. And the coach wanted to make sure that I let them know that they should not be going out and partying and they should not be flying to L.A. on their own. And really just making sure that I emphasize the importance of quarantining for themselves and the people around them, but also for their basketball team and their career.
In the hangar, Ingles, then a six-year veteran, reiterates the warning.
Dunn: He was the dad of the team. He would back me up when I would say things like, “OK, guys, you really need to take this quarantine seriously. That means you’re going from here in your private car directly to your home for this many days and watching for these symptoms. That means you’re not working out together, you’re not going to the club, you’re not going to L.A.” And then he would provide much more colorful language to the team.
It’s just something that I hadn’t considered walking into that environment that you’re actually dealing with young kids. I mean 19-, 20-year-olds who might not completely understand the gravity of the situation.
Our team also made a connection with the wives of the players or parents for those of them who still had their parents in their house. And we actually had daily connections with their families as well because they were extremely worried and wanted to know what to look out for in their own homes. So I took care of the players, and then one of my colleagues took care of the players’ families. This was also when you had to test more regularly, so we also had to assign a local health department nurse to go to Rudy’s house to test him regularly as well.
Epilogue
Gobert: Obviously it was very scary. And obviously everything that happened after that, it was a very tough experience as a human being. The next month after that was one of the most challenging stretches of my life in every aspect. I mean, the world questioning my intentions and then the fear. After that, I had different symptoms. The fear of what’s going to happen to me in terms of health, reading a lot of different things and wondering pretty much … why me?
Holt: I had a conference call with other mayors that morning and had heard from the mayor of Seattle, which was an early place that was hit. So that was on my mind. I mean, it sounded horrible. There were horror stories coming out of places like that, but still not enough to really think about taking the kinds of actions that were about to happen literally that night. And that’s why I think that night was so shocking. Most of us were just not in that headspace yet.
Stitt: Clay, every time I see him, he says, tell Remy he needs to come back. I owe him a bunch of autographs.
Young: The thing that I’m proud of too, as I look back on it, is that I think it would’ve been easy for me to be a little too quick with certain things. And even when I look back at things I tweeted, I feel like I was very level-headed. That stuff is all happening so fast in real time, and you want to get it right and you want to let everybody know what you’re seeing.
People afterwards, they were like, “What were you thinking?” I was like, “It was all about eyes and ears. Keep my eyes wide open and my ears wide open and gather everything that I can in this moment. And then just say it back.”
Dunn: It was pretty wild having Donovan Mitchell’s mom call me because, of course, she was super worried about her son. And so talking to her, mother to mother, was just such a powerful moment. You have this superstar who still has a mom that worries about him and cares about him as much as I care about my 8-year-old son and would do the same for him. It continues to be one of those moments you’ll never forget.
On March 12, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer suspend their respective seasons, Major League Baseball cancels spring training games and delays the start of its season, and the NCAA cancels its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
On Friday, March 13, Paul, the president of the NBPA, is tested for COVID-19 in Oklahoma City, after which he flies back home to Southern California, eager to see his family. But because he doesn’t have his test results, he sits in his car in his driveway, according to “The Day Sports Stood Still,” waiting, because he doesn’t want to expose his family members, who are inside his home.
His wife brings him food. He can see his family members through the window, and they can see him sitting in the car. He avoids physical contact with them over the next four days until, on March 17, Paul receives his results. He enters his home to find his son. But before his son approaches, he pauses.
Then Paul tells him the test results: negative. The two share a long embrace.
Four months after Gobert’s positive test, the NBA resumes its season at Walt Disney World Resort outside Orlando, Florida.
Mitchell: I think that helped our on-court relationship [with Gobert], ironically enough, because it was like, “All right, everything else is out the window. We can just hoop now.” I don’t gotta worry about undertone s— here and here. He doesn’t worry about undertone s— here. There’s none of that s—. All that s— is done. When we came to the bubble, that’s when we started playing. He didn’t feel like he had to pretend. I didn’t have to pretend. It was just like, cool. We’re not saying we’re the best of friends. I don’t hate you. We’re not the best of friends, but we know what we can be on the floor. And I think that was what we saw.
Lindsey: There’s a time that Rudy, in particular, was getting blamed, and it was very misplaced. You would not believe the calls that I actually got personally. And then literally we had to post guards in front of his house because of the nonsense that somehow he became Patient 1 that brought it over. So in some ways there’s been a trail that has unfairly followed for someone that I care about deeply.
Mitchell: I honestly think we both had friction before that. I mean, I don’t think that — we know that. There was friction before that. I tell people this all the time. I think after the COVID thing, we played our best basketball. I think it eliminated the friction. It was put on the table. It forced us to have a conversation. It forced us to sit down and talk as men. This is when I really learned about being a grown-up, being [about] business, being co-workers versus friends.
Roberts: I think part of the NBA’s legacy should be that it put the health of its players and its fans ahead of its financial interests and said, “We’re not going to compromise on this.” It’s important. I don’t know that any other league would’ve done that. We’ll never know.
Ho: From my experience, the NBA was much more proactive than the rest of society in terms of getting ready for this.
Silver: In some ways I was less proud, in a way, of the fact that we were the canary in the mine, so to speak, on shutting things down than the fact that we found a way to operate in that summer in our so-called bubble and found a way, pre-vaccines in a COVID environment, to resume our business. That, to me, was something because there, through planning and enormous cooperation of 30 teams and government officials in Florida and you name it, we figured out a way to operate when people badly wanted television programming and entertainment and most of the country was still shut down.
Gobert: It doesn’t feel like five years ago.
Silver: It feels like a hundred years ago.
Additional reporting from ESPN’s Jamal Collier and Michael C. Wright. Interviews from 2020 are from ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast, “March 11, 2020.”
