COVID-19 fear has turned sports world upside down
In the German soccer league, they have a “winter pause” — a month without games starting just before the new year.
The pause is viewed as an opportunity to rest ahead of the season’s home-stretch.
Well, nearly every sports league in North America is on a pause, and, unlike the German break, we have no idea how long this one will last — or if the seasons will resume at all.
This unprecedented response to the COVID-19 pandemic happened in such short order, it’s fair for your head to be spinning.
Mine certainly is.
My, what an exhausting year this past week was.
For now, we’re all looking for answers. How did this happen? When are the games coming back? What happens when they do return?
While the shut-downs felt rapid-fire, answers to those questions will be slow to come to light.
Again, we’re paused.
For now, I can only tell you how we’ve reached this point and what I am hearing and thinking about when — and how — the games will return.
The lack of sports in our lives is, of course, trivial in the scheme of things, but the role sports have played amid the
SARS-COV-2 pandemic is in no way small.
And that’s for better or for worse.
As the virus escalated on the coasts, sports leagues held out until the last moment, hoping to eke out a few more million dollars before the inevitable took hold.
Physical distancing had been advised for weeks — not days — before the American sports landscape took heed.
But when Santa Clara County took the smart, prudent step Tuesday to ban all gatherings over 1,000 people, the dominoes started to fall. The San Jose Sharks, their inhouse minor-league affiliate, and the San Jose Earthquakes’ seasons were all put on hold in the name of public health and “flattening the curve”.
Later that night, though, the Warriors opened the doors to the 18,000-plus seat Chase Center for a game against the Clippers. The arena was roughly 60% full, but there was nothing distant about the socializing. Indeed, even after the Santa Clara County ban — despite the advice of the CDC and every other epidemiologist on the planet — the games continued, coast-to-coast, and across those oceans, too.
It was a strange contest behind-the-scenes. New media protocols, enacted Monday night by the four then-active North American sports leagues, which closed locker rooms and kept the press at least six feet away from any player or coach set an ominous tone. Some opportunists scored some cheap tickets, but few conversations in the bowl or concourse were about basketball.
In all of those conversations about the coronavirus, a consensus was formed: Tuesday night was probably the last “normal” Warriors game we’d have for a while. Within 24 hours of the Warriors’ tipoff, that suspicion was proven to be true.
San Francisco followed Santa Clara County’s lead and shut the Chase Center’s
doors Wednesday morning. The Warriors didn’t fight it and planned to make their home games in March — starting Thursday — closed-door affairs.
But the Warriors’ fanfree game Thursday night against the Brooklyn Nets never happened.
Wednesday night, in Oklahoma City, the NBA came to a screeching halt, setting off a chain reaction befitting of a pandemic and brought us to this strange moment in time.
Jazz center Rudy Gobert, who had been glib about the threat of the virus in both public and private, had been on the NBA injury report Wednesday morning, ahead of his team’s game against the Thunder. He was listed as having an “illness”, but he was with the team in OKC.
Moments before tip-off, that illness was proven to be COVID-19.
Both five-man units were on the court, waiting for the three referees to join them. The referees, we’d later find out, were waiting for the NBA to give them a go-ahead. A strange holding pattern evolved. Per ESPN, Chris Paul went over to the Jazz bench to inquire what was happening. The Jazz bench — fearing the worst — yelled at Paul to get away from them.
The delay was broken by Thunder trainer Donnie Strack, who ran onto the court and told the referees of Gobert’s positive test.
As the referees walked off the court, the Chesapeake Energy Arena’s hype man told fans to “get up” for the t-shirt cannon.
Moments later, it was announced that “due to unforeseen circumstances, the game has been postponed.”
Other games in the NBA continued, but within an hour the NBA had suspended the season. The league had planned on hosting closed-door games during the pandemic, but with the entire sports world now playing Six Degrees of Rudy Gobert, a shut-down was unavoidable.
And so started the blur. The National Hockey League followed suit “pausing” its season Thursday morning. Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball were next. The NCAA — which had seen the vast majority of its conference tournaments suspended — canceled its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments as well as any remaining winter sports and all spring sports.
One by one leagues big and small — professional and amateur — followed suit.
Public relations had aligned with public health. To slow the spread of this virus, which is exceptionally deadly to the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions and has the potential to overwhelm the health-care system, everyone went home.
The NBA will be on break for at least 30 days. Major League Baseball put a two-week delay on Opening Day. Those dates are tentative at best.
The NHL announced it will return to the ice when it’s “prudent and safe to start back up.” That’s a more accurate representation.
When will that prudent and safe day be? Hopefully soon, but that depends on everyone — not just those involved with sports — being diligent and safe.
The consensus of those I talk to around the sporting landscape is that the earliest chance of normalcy returning is in May.
In the coming weeks, when we all have more understanding of the situation, leagues will begin to formulate return plans. I’d expect to see shortened schedules — particularly in baseball — and trophy presentations in the NBA and NHL late July or August.
Man, do I hope that prediction is correct.
Things are already weird. They’re going to be weird for quite a while. My colleagues and I will still be covering our teams and the sports world at large in addition to our continued contributions to our news group’s stellar coverage of the pandemic.
As much as we love sports, there are more pressing issues than sports at hand.
But, overall, respect and enjoy the pause as best you can. Get some rest before the homestretch. When the games do return, you won’t be able to keep up.