Here’s What I Know…

The moment our illusion of invincibility was shattered. (via ESPN.com)

The last day I went to work in Lower Manhattan was March 11, the same day the Utah Jazz found themselves thrust quite uncomfortably under the spotlight amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

Just three weeks back from a long parental leave, I felt a little obligated to show my face downtown, even though things were already getting a little scary at that point. The virus had already claimed dozens of American lives by that points, and the number of confirmed U.S. cases had grown by 700% in the week leading up to March 11. Since I normally work from home at least a couple days each week anyway, I figured it was a good opportunity to make an appearance and then work the rest of the week remotely as I joined millions of Americans in nervously watching the growth trajectory of the highly contagious illness.

My commute involves a half mile walk to the 2/3 train, which I ride for three stops before transferring to the 4/5 for another four, and then I walk another half mile or so to my building. There is really no option of preserving a protective buffer of open space on the train between the hours of 8 and 10 a.m. So instead, I spent the whole ride trying to mentally catalog everything I touched after making contact with the handrail or other passengers, so that I could sanitize those items once I got to work. I followed the same mental process on my way home. Usually when I walk in the door after my commute, my infant son is excited to see me, so I hurry and spritz some sanitizer so that I can play with him. This time, I made him wait with his mom while I went and washed thoroughly

 So yeah, it was already a bit worrisome. Which is why I was looking forward to mentally disconnecting from the pandemic for a couple of hours by watching the Jazz play an important game with playoff implications against the Oklahoma City Thunder. I fed, bathed and changed the kiddo and then put him down to sleep, and I did my best to wave away the clouds in my head and get into basketball mode.

You know what happened — or didn’t happen — next.

That game was seconds away from starting when news reached the court, via a frantic Thunder medical staffer, that the NBA had its first known case of coronavirus. Both teams retreated to their locker rooms. Fans and media waited. Long before the news was clear to everybody else, the eeriness of those uncertain moments staring at a vacant basketball court certainly presaged all the weirdness that was to follow. For oh-so-many Americans, the threat became real that night.

Longtime friends of mine were in the building, unsure if they’d been exposed, how they would know if they were sick, or whether they were even allowed to walk out of Chesapeake Energy Arena. 

My calendar says that was 20 days ago. Sure. Whatever you say, calendar. Days and weeks have crawled by as life as we know it — starting with NBA basketball — has ground to a halt. Another 170,000 people in the U.S. are sick, and the death count has risen to nearly 4,000. Some people have gotten better. Countless others are afraid and anxious. Businesses of all sizes have suffered, and many of us have lost jobs and incomes. Here in my city, one in every 200 New Yorkers has contracted the virus — that we know of.

For all of those reasons, this website has been a little quiet since those uncomfortable moments in Oklahoma. First of all, it’s a site about basketball and the NBA, two things that only barely exist at the moment. But also, it just hasn’t felt that important to me. Every time I see tweets going around with guesses on future salary cap implications, or everybodys “All-last-name-contained-the-letter-M” teams¹, I just haven’t been able to get myself there mentally. That’s not a judgment. If you are in a mental and emotional place where you can keep yourself distracted by that stuff, enjoy it! I have been in a different place for the last 20 days. I’ve been thinking about how to keep my almost-8-month-old and my wife safe in a city where 1-2% of the population will be sick by week’s end. I’ve been worried about family members who are 2,000 miles away from me and vulnerable. I’ve been monitoring the way different individuals and institutions have responded to the crisis. I’ve been trying to remain somewhat useful in my job, recognizing that I’m extremely fortunate to still have a role to perform.

At some point I’ll go back to caring about debates like Should Deron Williams’ jersey be retired? or If Draymond Green and Andrei Kirilenko switched places, who would have been more valuable? I promise. I just don’t know when. That’s not all I don’t know.

I don’t know how long this will last. I don’t know at which end of the forecasted range of outcomes the overall impact will fall. I don’t know if the 2019-20 NBA season is over, or what it will look like if it resumes at some point this summer.

But here are a few things I do know.

We’ll get through this together. I can follow every government directive and piece of medical advice and COVID-19 will still continue to rampage aggressively through my town if my neighbors do differently. You can shop responsibly, buying only what you need, but the shelves will be empty if hoarding jerks decide instead to profiteer the pandemic. In other words, it’s going to take all of us, and we’re going to learn a lot about how to have faith in and concern for one another.

Things may get worse before they get better. Because of the particulars of this virus, any measures we take today to slow the spread of COVID-19 are going to pay off in around two weeks. That means that what happens tomorrow and the day after tomorrow are largely a function of how seriously people took this problem two weeks ago. Unfortunately, not everybody was on board two weeks ago, and some states and municipalities are still dragging their feet on implementing life-saving mitigation plans. Because of that, most people projecting this thing out indicate that the curve will continue to rise before it heads back toward the X-axis, even in the best-case scenarios. The sooner we understand and accept that, they better. 

Chuckling at another human falling ill is always a bad look. Even if it’s James Dolan. Even if it’s the lick-the-toilet-seat guy. Even if it’s a member of a political party you don’t like. Even if it’s an NBA center who was admittedly too cavalier about the preventive measures early on. Rudy Gobert has apologized and owned his mistakes, which takes a lot of maturity. Still, we don’t know how Gobert contracted the virus or who got it from him (as opposed to the other way around). And it doesn’t matter. Our first concern should be hoping people get better. 

The “it’s overblown” takes are at the very least tonedeaf — at worst, they’re dangerous and might actually cost lives. Again, we don’t know how bad this will be. But if we somehow dodge the worse end of the range, it will be because we took this seriously, not because of the people who spent most of March shouting, “It’s just the flu!” The difference in how this virus transmits versus, for example, the common flu doesn’t sound huge until you start to think about it in terms of the exponential growth, which is mind-blowing.

Sports don’t really matter, except that they do. This ordeal has certainly forced some perspective. Yet every day when I venture onto social channels to see how my virtual peeps are doing, one thing I see over and over again is the benefits of all these connections we make because of shared obsession for round objects and the men and women who toss them around. People are lifting up the people with whom they interact precisely because of these communities of sports-lovers and NBA fans. In this time of isolation and anxiety, anywhere we can draw a sense of togetherness is a good thing. Sports does that for us in the best of times, and it’s doing it for us now, too.

It’s OK to feel however you’re feeling. If you’re sad, anxious, scared, angry, just know that a lot of people are feeling the same thing. If your family or business is suffering, hang in there and know that we’re pulling for you. Give yourself the space to acknowledge your emotions. Talk to someone. Nobody’s alone in this thing.

Someday things will feel normal again. I can’t wait.