The news of the NBA indefinitely suspending its season has been, unsurprisingly, a complete and utter shock to all, even with the reports that Rudy Gobert is the player to have tested positive for coronavirus. You may not have had a chance to witness someone’s firsthand reaction to the announcement, or had a mirror present to capture your own shocked face, but chances are most people looked like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban did during the third quarter of his team’s game against the Denver Nuggets.
Of all the things that happen in that clip, perhaps the most jarring is the fact that the officials in charge of Wednesday’s game were informed of this monumental decision from the NBA thanks to a security guard showing them the screen of Cuban’s phone. The NBA announced that the season’s suspension would begin as soon as the games finished on March 11, so the Dallas-Denver matchup just had to continue on with that information on everyone’s mind.
After finding out that this would be the last game the Mavs would play for some time, Cuban talked to ESPN during their telecast of the game and talked about his initial reaction.
This is crazy, this can’t be true. It’s not within the realm of possibilities. It seemed more like out of a movie than reality.I didn’t have any expectations. The thing about it is I’m not an expert, I’m not going to try to be an expert and our plan here was to defer to the NBA. They have people who specialize in this and they’re talking to the CDC the health organizations, the HHS. I don’t want to pretend and try to fake it so we were just going to defer to the NBA.
Cuban also said he trusts commissioner Adam Silver’s judgement in making the call to suspend the season for now, and said it’s bigger than basketball. “You want to really make sure you’re doing this the right way because now it’s much more personal, and you’ve seen what’s happened in other countries,” Cuban said. “But just the whole idea that it’s come this close and potentially a couple [of[ players have it, just stunning isn’t the right word. It’s crazy.”
The Mavs owner also said the team would put together a program to help the arena staff that works hourly jobs that will be affected by games not being played.
This whole situation began when members of the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder suddenly left the floor under circumstances that were not immediately clear. It later came out that Jazz big man Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus, thus prompting the league to announced the indefinite suspension.
