Utah's Rudy Gobert became the first NBA player to test positive for coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. He was tested ahead of Utah's game against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday evening, which prompted the league to postpone to matchup.
Gobert teased the concern relating to coronavirus days prior to his positive diagnosis. Donovan Mitchell, Gobert's Jazz teammate, also tested positive for the virus. The NBA postponed its games for the foreseeable future. Multiple leagues followed the NBA's suit in either postponing or cancelling events such as the NHL, MLB and MLB since Gobert's ill-fated night.
WFAN's Evan Roberts believes Gobert's diagnosis is a moment that sparked a rapid change in the sports world.
"Last night, everything changed," Roberts said. "That inevitable story that came out a half hour, maybe 20 minutes, after they decided to postpone the game that Rudy Gobert, who a couple of days earlier was joking, he was having fun with the new media policy — so he decided to touch all of the microphones and laugh about it — he tested positive for Coronavirus. At that moment even though you can't absorb everything in 30 seconds, you knew everything changed."
Roberts' co-host, Joe Benigno, says the immediate course of action was bound to occur.
"I think even if these guys hadn't tested positive this was going to happen," Benigno said. "This was inevitable. With the way things were going, it was inevitable everything — the NHL is now shut down, all the conference tournaments in college basketball is shut down."
The league-wide suspension will last at least 30 days, according to the Toronto Star's Bruce Arthur. The Brooklyn Nets, in the midst of a playoff push, had 18 games remaining on its regular-season schedule. It's likely the next time the Nets hit the court would be when they occupy the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference.
"I think we'll see the NBA for the playoffs," Benigno said. "I think what's ultimately going to happen, there's not a ton of regular season games left and what will happen is they'll wipe out the rest of the regular season and hopefully this will all be behind us and they'll just play the playoffs."
At the time of Thursday's show open, the NCAA Tournament was set to move forward with a strict attendance policy. NCAA president Mark Emmert announced the cancellation of March Madness just a few hours later, highlighting the moving parts related to the coronavirus' precautionary measures.
"At this point things change so quickly over the last 24 hours," Roberts said. "Twenty-four hours ago, we were on the air thinking, 'they'll do some empty arena games.' We didn't think in less than 24 hours — NBA, NHL suspended ... and Major League Baseball suspending spring training after today. Things are changing so fast that the next question you have is how long does this last? Is this something that 'oh, it's three weeks!' or 'oh, it's a month or three months?'
"I don't know the answer to that," Roberts added. "I'm certainly not a doctor. You aren't. I don't even know if the doctors and scientists know the answer to that. That what shutting down things will do. It'll probably help obviously ... but I don't know when we'll see an NBA game or an NHL game or a baseball game or when that Opening Day is going to occur. I don't know when that's going to happen."
Click the audio player to listen to the open from Benigno and Roberts in its entirety (Note: NCAA Tournament had not been officially canceled at time of broadcast)
