The NBA has suspended the current season until further notice due to the coronavirus outbreak. On Wednesday night, Rudy Gobert and Emmanuel Mudiay tested positive for the COVID-19, which prompted the league to suspend the rest of the games of the night, as well as future matches.
It was expected for the league to start playing games behind closed doors, but now things took a different dimension. This is something to be very careful about, and the league office is well aware of that. This situation goes beyond the show and the entertainment.
That’s what the Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban said, as soon as he found out the league had suspended its campaign.
“This is crazy. This can’t be true,” he told ESPN during an in-game interview when talking about the league’s decision. “I mean, it’s not within the realm of possibility. It seemed more like out of a movie than reality.”
After the game, he expressed how he feels with all of this, stating this goes beyond the game of basketball.
“Very concerned, but it’s not necessarily about basketball. Obviously this is much bigger than basketball,” Cuban said.
Further, he elaborated on how teams and the league, in general, could approach this situation, which is affecting a lot of people around the world.
“We have to be smart in how we respond,” he added. “This is people’s lives at stakes. This isn’t about basketball, this isn’t about the Mavericks. This isn’t about when do we start, do we start? Or how do we start? This is a pandemic, a global pandemic where people’s lives are at stake. I’m a lot more worried about my kids and my mom who is 82 years old — in talking to her and telling her to stay in the house — than when we play in our next game.”
This is indeed a bad situation for everybody, not only for the NBA but to people in the U.S. This is already a pandemic and as Cuban said, people’s lives are at stakes.
