Written by Danuel House Jr.Published on The Players' Tribune
The Players’ Tribune is introducing a new series called The Iso. With so many of us keeping our distance from each other in a variety of ways, we decided to ask some of our favorite athletes to share how they’ve been dealing with life in the Covid-19 world, and how they’re spending their time away from their sport.
We had just landed in L.A. Thursday, the 12th. The plane didn’t have WiFi, and my phone was off. So, I didn’t hear anything until we landed.
Then, I got everything at once.
After we got off the plane, we learned that it was all over. The remainder of the NBA season would be postponed because they were concerned about player safety. And with it being a pandemic, they wanted to make sure that they were taking the right measures for everybody who works in the NBA. That everybody in the organization — on and off the court — would be safe.
This hit, and it was serious. Our team started doing what the league told them, in order to make sure that everyone was good. I knew, right away, that I was gon’ get back to my family and loved ones. That was the whole team’s priority.
It was a trending topic on Twitter — that’s how I first got hip to everything with the virus spreading. My friends started talking about it, everybody was talking about it. I was aware of it, but once it took hold of the league in the way that it did, I was super shocked. It definitely put people on notice. I was just shocked by the way that it happened.
Today is Friday? Yeah. That would make this Day 1. It’s Day 1 that you can’t come to the arena. It’s Day 5 that they’ve had us isolated from each other. They were allowing us in, two and three players at a time, but we just got a text that we had to stop until further notice.
I wake up in the mornings like, Damn, I don’t got nothing to do today. My brain, almost instinctively, says, “Damn, I wish I could go play basketball.” I roll over and grab my phone. There’s news: everything’s worse.