NBA stars reflect on the week that COVID-19 halted the game – and the world
By Melissa Rohlin
FOX Sports NBA Writer
A little over a year ago, LeBron James was asked for his thoughts on playing NBA games without fans.
It was March 6, and James had just led the Lakers to a 113-103 victory over the Eastern Conference-leading Milwaukee Bucks in front of nearly 19,000 fans at Staples Center.
As James stood in the Lakers' locker room inches away from at least 40 reporters who were sandwiched together like sardines, the question seemed laughable.
"Nah, impossible," he said. "I ain’t playing if you don’t have the fans in the crowd."
At that time, COVID-19 seemed like a strange disease in a faraway land.
But over the next few days, things drastically changed.
Teams started having meetings about the seriousness of the virus, encouraging players to wash their hands and socially distance themselves. James changed his stance on playing without fans, saying he'd do whatever was safest. And on March 9, the league temporarily banned reporters from locker rooms before and after games, restricting access to "essential staff."
On March 11, the entire world changed.
Before a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus. In a swift and shocking move, NBA commissioner Adam Silver suspended the season indefinitely, setting into motion a domino effect that essentially shut down sports and society.
Fast forward 365 days, and 2.6 million deaths have occurred worldwide.
After a year of stay-at-home orders, mask mandates and unbearable suffering for many, everyone's perspective has dramatically shifted. Now, it's the thought of playing in front of 19,000 fans that seems laughable.
As James sat alone in a hotel room in Atlanta on Sunday speaking to reporters over Zoom ahead of the All-Star Game, he was asked to reflect on that dizzying period in which players – and the rest of the nation –first began to grasp the gravity of the pandemic a year ago.
"When we saw the events that happened in OKC, it was just so – you didn't know really what to think," James said. "It was the first time it ever happened in any one of our major sports leagues, so to see it happen, you knew at that point that it would trickle down to everyone else."
After the NBA season was paused, sports essentially came to a screeching halt. The NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments were canceled, as were the NHL season and MLB spring training.
The NBA was at the forefront of taking the virus seriously and that likely saved many lives. The day before the league was suspended, President Donald Trump downplayed the virus, telling reporters March 10, "Stay calm. It will go away."
Silver sent a very different message to the nation.
"It's crazy nobody really didn't know too much information about the virus," Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard told reporters Sunday. "At that moment, you just thought that it was serious with the NBA shutting it down."
For Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, he didn't need to wait for the league to be suspended to start taking things seriously.
His longtime girlfriend, Mariah Riddlesprigger, had just given birth to their son in February of 2020. And when the Bucks were advised in a team meeting to shelter at home when they weren't practicing or playing, he took those words to heart.
"I remember when I was going home, I was on the phone with my significant other and I was telling her, like, this is serious, and we've got to be extremely careful," Antetokounmpo told reporters Sunday. "We just had a baby at the time and I was like, 'OK, I should just go and get a bunch of groceries and just stay home until we see how this plays out.'
"A couple of days later, the whole NBA got shut down. I was like, 'I told you, you wasn't listening. I told you, this is serious.' After that, we went into quarantine and tried to stay home as much as possible. It was tough because we just had the baby. But at the end of the day, it was safe. That was the safe thing to do and that's what we did."
It was a scary and confusing time for everyone.
No one knew what was going on. Or how long their lives would be put on hold.
"We was hoping that it would only be a couple of weeks, shut down for a little bit, and then we get a handle over this thing, and obviously that was being way too optimistic," James said. "We just took it. We just took it as a league, took it as players, as coaches, everyone in the organization. It was just very difficult and challenging for all of us. It's something that we never experienced before."
For Gobert, the first few months after he tested positive for the virus were miserable.
He was weak. He lost his sense of taste and smell. And he had some minor respiratory issues.
On top of that, he was being vilified for his initial carelessness with the virus. On March 9, after a shootaround, Gobert jokingly touched reporters' recording devices near him on a podium, mocking the league's new coronavirus precautions.
He was similarly careless in the Jazz locker room, touching other players' belongings, according to an ESPN report. Donovan Mitchell later tested positive for the virus.
A day after the season was suspended, Gobert issued an apology over Instagram. He went on to pledge $500,000 to various groups affected by the coronavirus.
Nearly a year later, he called the whole situation a "learning experience."
"I think when you go through tough times, it makes you grow," Gobert told reporters Sunday. "That's exactly that for me. Those two weeks, those two months, were really tough. I was able to get through it with the help obviously of the people around me, my family, the people that are there for me."
During an appearance on "Good Morning America" on March 16, Mitchell acknowledged that initially, he was very frustrated with Gobert saying, "It took a while for me to kind of cool off."
But this week, Mitchell said they've long moved past that incident.
Mitchell said they cleared the air when the season resumed July 30 at Walt Disney World near Orlando, more than four months after the NBA was paused. During that time, players were quarantined together in an NBA bubble with no one to spend time with but each other.
"I think the biggest thing was, one, the bubble experience – not even just the fact that we were around each other 24/7, but the fact that we kind were like, look, this is what it is," Mitchell told reporters Sunday. "And a lot of it, quite frankly, was just blown out of proportion, to be honest. If we lived our lives through social media then we wouldn't be as even-keeled."
Now Mitchell says the Jazz, who have the best record in the NBA at 27-9, are using their doubters as inspiration.
The people who thought Mitchell's relationship with Gobert was unsalvageable or who wrote the Jazz off after they blew a 3-1 series lead to the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs last season are actually inspiring their success.
"It really fueled us to come into this season with this type of chip on our shoulders and I think that's what you're seeing – a bunch of guys who just feel like we're going to go out there and do it," Mitchell said. "At the end of the day, we're going to go out there and find ways to win. And the threat, you don't know where it's coming from each game. I think that's what makes us special as a group. The chemistry is unbelievable."
Now, as more and more people are receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and the number of new cases is declining, there's renewed hope around the league – and the nation – that things can start to normalize.
As James sat alone in his hotel room last weekend, he was asked what precautions he's taken to avoid contracting the virus.
All of them, he said.
"I go to the facility, and I go home," James said. "And then I go to the arena, and then I go home with my family."
The once laughable thought of playing games without fans has become the new normal. But James hopes that can change soon.
Just over a year ago, he said how much they mean to him.
And that has not changed.
"I play for the fans," he said at the time. "That’s what it’s all about."
Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She has previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.