Gasol details battle with COVID-19
LOS ANGELES » It’s become a haunting and familiar checklist: Fever? Marc Gasol had that. He had aches, and difficulty breathing. He lost his sense of taste and smell, which have only recently started coming back.
The headaches were the most painful symptoms, and he was humbled when he, a professional athlete for half his life, struggled to climb a flight of stairs. But that wasn’t even the worst part of a battle with COVID-19 — it was worrying about his wife and children.
“It’s not only about you and how you deal with it, it’s who you pass it on to,” he said. “Sadly, it went around the house, too.”
For the first time in nearly a month, Gasol was able to get on the court for the Lakers on Thursday night against the 76ers after missing the previous nine games. His five-point, two-rebound comeback in a 15-minute-restricted appearance was characteristically modest, but in his first game back after contracting COVID-19, playing at all felt a little bit like a victory.
Gasol took part in a Thursday morning shootaround after about a week of conditioning, trying to ramp back up to reasonable playing shape following a bout with a disease that has caused longterm effects in even elite athletes.
But despite the grimness of his situation, the 36-year-old Spaniard tackled his return to play with his playful sense of humor: “I’m still unathletic, so the infection didn’t affect me much.”
But it was serious stuff, Gasol acknowledged, too. He first entered the NBA’s COVID-19 protocols on March 2, when the Lakers announced before a game against the Phoenix Suns that he would be out just after the Lakers had finally won back-to-back games. But those early days didn’t seem so bad.
“I had a little bit of headaches, but I’m like, ‘Well, hopefully I’m going to be pretty much asymptomatic,’” he said. “And then when it hits you, it hits you really hard, at least for me.”
Gasol said he had the worst of his symptoms for five or six days, and during most of that time, his primary concern was his family. While he was hoping to get back to the Lakers as soon as possible: “It puts basketball in the right place at that moment. It’s not that important.”
While Gasol is the first Laker to contract COVID-19 this season and miss extended time, other NBA players have echoed familiar sentiments about a disease that some mistakenly believe does not manifest in serious symptoms for young, healthy people.
Boston’s Jayson Tatum said well up to a month after he had first gotten COVID-19 that he was still struggling with his conditioning. Toronto’s Fred VanVleet described feeling it “in my bones.” Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony
Towns lived the nightmare of watching dear family members, including his mother, die from it, then got it himself.
Gasol said he believed he got COVID-19 even though he was diligently following safe practices, but he said the experience has only strengthened his belief in how important it is to wear a mask and practice social distancing.
“I think we all understand it’s not 100 percent (fool)proof what we’re trying to do here,” he said. “And hopefully we get through the season and have as many people as possible vaccinated by the playoffs so people can come and watch the games and enjoy what we do.”
While a source confirmed to Southern California News Group that the Lakers are hoping to vaccinate people in the organization as soon as Monday, Gasol would not be on that list: People who have been infected by the coronavirus face a mandatory waiting period before they can receive a vaccine dose.