NBA PROVIDES SOBERING LESSON ON SPREAD OF VIRUS
Even people in superb physical condition and showing no symptoms are vulnerable
A professional basketball player could be forgiven for feeling invulnerable. From a young age they are treated like a prized asset, sought by prep schools and then universities where, for the most part, they are among the most important people on campus while also not particularly interested in education.
When they make the National Basketball Association, the sense of living in a bubble only increases. They split time between practice facilities and home, and on the road they travel in charter jets and stay in luxury hotels.
A team bus will pick them up at the hotel and drop them at the arena. Even for an average player, it is a decidedly uncommon life.
But the NBA and its players are also, unintentionally, providing a stark lesson in the dangerous spread of the coronavirus. In the days since Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz was first revealed to have tested positive for COVID-19, there has been a steady trickle of new cases among his colleagues.
His teammate Donovan Mitchell was first; he was asymptomatic and was only discovered to have the virus because all Jazz players and staff were immediately tested. Mitchell was about to play in a game on the night when the NBA shuttered its doors on the Gobert result.
The Toronto Raptors, who had played the Jazz on March 9, just before the shutdown, would seem to be the team most likely to have been infected by Gobert or Mitchell. Instead, they and their staff are all said to have negative test results.
But it has been other teams and players who have tested positive: Four members of the Brooklyn Nets, including Kevin Durant, who has not played all season while recovering from Achilles surgery. Three players on the Philadelphia 76ers. Two players on the Los Angeles Lakers. A member of the Denver Nuggets, although whether that person is a player or staff has not been disclosed. Marcus Smart, who plays for the Boston Celtics. (Two players on the Ottawa Senators have also tested positive.)
The NBA quickly suspended its business on March 11, but the league did not ask every player on every team to self-isolate.
The 76ers, for example, tested their players only when they were advised they might have come in contact with someone who had COVID-19. (They played the Lakers on March 3, but it’s not known if this was the contact in question.)
And so while the contact tracing could be as simple as Team X playing Team Y playing Team Z within the space of a few days — the Celtics played the Jazz on March 6 — it’s also possible all these cases are popping up only because NBA players have spent recent days going about their business. As we keep learning, it only takes a brief contact with someone who is spreading the virus, perhaps unknowingly, to become infected.
But the stark warning for everyone is, even among this small group of extremely healthy individuals, the spread of coronavirus has been dramatic. The NBA players who have the virus are not unlike the many random cases we are now seeing reported every day: people who didn’t go to China or Iran or Italy, people who aren’t aware they were ever at risk for contracting COVID-19, people who absolutely did not think they had it because they felt fine.
In the case of the athletes, they felt more than fine. An NBA player in mid-season form is by necessity in absurd physical condition. They have to be able to undergo the equivalent of gruelling two-hour workouts on back-to-back nights. Were there ever a group of people most likely to think they were immune to the coronavirus because they were young and healthy, professional athletes are it.
But they are quite obviously not. Perhaps some of these players assumed they would be fine because they kept to their routines, working out at team facilities and interacting with staff and trainers. It was not long ago health authorities approved of such behaviour. Perhaps some of the affected players kept a wider social circle, since there were not hard restrictions on what they could or could not do.
Whatever the case, the virus has spread among them. It is a lesson. Even just going to what is essentially a private gym can no longer be considered safe behaviour. Even being one of the best-conditioned people on the planet is no protection from contracting the virus. This has a direct impact on the possibility of the NBA returning to action any time soon, simply because we know that even if pro leagues were to take baby steps toward altered schedules, and training camps and games in empty arenas, it would just take one more positive result to shut the whole thing down again.
But that’s not the important take-away here. The NBA and its players have, entirely by accident, provided an experiment for how coronavirus spread. They acted, for too long, like it only mattered if you felt sick. They have shown that was wrong.
It’s up to the rest of us to learn from their example.
As we keep learning, it only takes a brief contact with someone who is spreading the virus, perhaps unknowingly, to become infected.