The Utah Jazz have two players who have tested positive for the coronavirus – Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell. As a result, the NBA is monitoring the health of five teams. According to Brian Windhorst of ESPN, players from teams that have faced the Jazz within the past 10 days have been told to self-quarantine. Those teams are the Cleveland Cavaliers, New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Detroit Pistons and the Toronto Raptors. One player from the Pistons said he’s had contact with Gobert, but he’s been doing everything he can to take care of himself.
“I’m sure I probably had contact with [Gobert]. But at the same time, like I said, [I’m] just taking precautions,” Detroit’s Langston Galloway said. “We’ve been washing our hands, and when the reports started coming out, everybody’s kinda been on their hand sanitizer, washing their hands, just staying focused on that moment of, hey, [we have] interaction with a lot of different people and knowing that at the end of the day, you might’ve touched the ball, you might’ve interacted with a fan, and just being [cautious] with that going forward.”
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The details of the self-quarantine are unknown, but the players don’t have to worry about playing games in the foreseeable future since the NBA suspended the season. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had a strong reaction to news as he said it couldn’t be real.
“This is crazy. This can’t be true,” he said. “I mean, it’s not within the realm of possibility. It seemed more like out of a movie than reality.”
Cuban went on to say that NBA commissioner Adam Silver is doing what’s best for the league.
“I trust Adam [Silver]. You know what? It’s really not about basketball or money,” Cuban said. “Literally, if this thing is exploding to the point where all of a sudden players and others have had it, you think about your family. You want to make sure you’re doing this the right way. Now it’s much more personal, and you’ve seen what’s happened in other countries, but just the whole idea that it’s come this close and potentially a couple players have it, just, ‘stunning’ isn’t the right word. Just crazy.”
According to John Hopkins University, there are over 127,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide with over 4,700 deaths. In the U.S., over 1,300 people have the virus with 30 deaths in the state of Washington.
