Rudy Gobert didn’t exactly take the coronavirus threat seriously. In the days leading up to his positive diagnosis, he was making it a point to touch people and items in an effort to poke fun at those he felt were blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
Needless to say, he had the virus the whole time and exposed many to the disease, including his teammate Donovan Mitchell and a kid who got Gobert’s autograph last week.
On First Take, Stephen A. Smith responded to Gobert’s actions and the public apology he issued on Instagram.
“But there’s no escaping his immaturity, the insensitivity that he displayed and it was inexcusable. And the reason why it’s inexcusable when you’re playing around: when you’re playing around and you’re not doing harm to anybody else, okay, that’s fine. But there were people, even though he didn’t take it seriously, there were people inside that locker room who were taking it seriously.
We see cameras showing him touch people’s microphones, tape-recorders, stuff like that. What we don’t see is what Woj reported yesterday morning that he then went into his own locker room and started touching other people’s stuff and playing around with them cause his belief was, it’s nothing serious and the belief was that other people on the Utah Jazz were overreacting.”
We, of course, know that Gobert was being quite reckless in the locker room, in an effort to downplay the importance of Coronavirus. Upon finding out he had it, he was extremely apologetic.
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The virus will likely get worse before it gets better, and nobody knows when life will return to normal for Americans and people all around the world. The best way to contain this thing is to be cautious and thoughtful in how you interact with others.
Gobert tought us that lesson, even if he didn’t mean to.
