Second in a series of articles looking at the week when sports were stopped by the coronavirus pandemic.
Christian Wood, then the Pistons’ up-and-coming young center, had never played better but knew something was not right.
He knew this was no common cold.
Eric Gordon, the Rockets veteran guard, was in the air about 30 minutes away from Los Angeles, when he began to hear the news that the season could be stopped and the Rockets’ much-anticipated rematch with the Lakers scheduled for the next night could be postponed.
He sensed everything was about to change.
Keith Jones, the Rockets vice president, was in Hobby Airport after the Rockets’ charter had been grounded because of licensing issues, first trying to get the Rockets’ equipment to Los Angeles and then working to get the team back with no jet lined up to fly them home.
He had long dealt with crises but none quite like this.
Tad Brown, the Rockets CEO, was going from calls with Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta to calls to NBA commissioner Adam Silver. He had just arrived home when the Utah Jazz game against the Oklahoma City Thunder was postponed.
He immediately knew the NBA would face challenges unlike any others but could not begin to predict the way so much of the world would stop the night the NBA pulled the plug.
“Everything changed on March 11,” Brown said. “Everything.”
A season cut short
The game might have been the best of Wood’s career. Matched up against Rudy Gobert, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, Wood had 30 points, then a career-high, with 11 rebounds. It was a highlight in a string of 10-conseutive games scoring at least 18 points. It also might have changed his life in ways he could not have imagined.
On the day Utah’s Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, leading the NBA to shut down the season, Wood played in Philadelphia. Four days earlier, he had matched up with Gobert.
Wood did not know yet about Gobert’s test result. He did not think about Gobert feeling ill days earlier. Though health and safety protocols had come to the NBA and meetings had begun about how to handle the spread of COVID-19 just beginning in the United States, few connected the dots.
Wood felt sick. COVID was not considered.
“It was crazy,” Wood said. “I went to get checked by the doctors. They just said I might have a cold. But it felt worse. I said, ‘There’s no way a cold feels like this.’ But I still went to play and still had a great game.”
Wood played well, making 14 of 18 shots and scoring 32 points in a match up with the Sixers’ Joel Embiid. When the game was over and the Pistons returned to the locker room, they saw the news that the Jazz and Thunder had been ordered off the court. Soon, reports circulated about Gobert’s test result.
“Before the game, they said they might shut games down but we weren’t sure,” Wood said. “Nobody really believed it until right after the game. That’s when they shut it.
“That’s when they tried to connect I would have probably, most likely got it from him.
“I was scared. For sure. For sure. Rudy was the first. I think I was the second in the league at the time to have it. I was definitely a little shaken up.”
The Pistons were scheduled to stay in Philadelphia, but instead returned to Detroit. Wood was isolated in the back of the charter, as far from teammates and staff as possible.
His symptoms faded within days, but he was kept in quarantine for three weeks.
“I was diagnosed with COVID,” Wood said. “They shut the league down so everybody was trying to figure out how they could see their families, if they could travel to go home.
“They were trying to find ways for me to stay in shape and get back in shape. It was hard when you have two, three weeks and they say you can’t touch a basketball or go out and lift weights or do anything. I had the owner (Tom Gores) and the coach (Dwane Casey) bringing me food and leaving it at my door.”
Wood felt better so quickly his concern was not about his health. He was in the midst of by far the best stretch of his career. He had been with five teams in five seasons. He had been cut in China when he was told he was not good enough for the CBA. He had to survive the last cut of that season’s training camp to make the Pistons’ roster.
“I felt like I was having a most improved season,” Wood said. “Being a guy that was the 15th guy on the roster to now I’m a starting caliber big and I’m playing at a high level against Joel Embiid and Rudy Gobert and those guys, I felt like I was having a great season toward the end.
“It’s really crazy. I know it sounds crazy. But I was like, ‘Damn, they canceled my season.’ I was doing so great. That was more than, ‘Damn, I got COVID.’”
When the NBA came up with a way to restart the season, the Pistons were among the teams excluded from the bubble. Wood’s season ended that night in Philadelphia. Even then, few predicted the way the year since would unfold.
“When we got back, we found out everybody got shut down,” Wood said. “We were like, ‘This is crazy.’ This never happened in the league.’ It was astonishing.”
Eric Gordon’s case of COVID-19
The flight was about 30 minutes from landing when word spread that the first domino had fallen in Oklahoma City. By the time it landed, the decision was made to halt the season.
“Once all that happened, we landed and I went to my home in LA,” Gordon said. “I saw they just shut down the season. It was the weirdest thing. That let me know this corona is a real thing. It seemed like the world evolved after that day. When the NBA shut it down, everybody around the U.S. and then around the world took notice.”
A private jet out of Van Nuys was arranged to return the Rockets that stayed in Los Angeles that night — James Harden, Russell Westbrook, P.J. Tucker, Tyson Chandler, Mike D’Antoni and Gordon — back to Houston. Silver would announce that play would be halted for at least 30 days. But there were still many unanswered questions about when teams could practice or players could work out.
“There was never enough information,” Gordon said. “Everybody was playing a guessing game. It was new for everybody. Nobody knew when the season was going to get back going. Nobody knew at the time how contagious this disease is. You knew things weren’t going to come back for a while. But there was no timetable of any sort to plan anything.”
Any plan established in those first hours would have changed for Gordon, anyway. The toughest season of Gordon’s career would get much more difficult when he contracted COVID.
“I probably had it a couple weeks after the shutdown,” Gordon said. “It was hard, for sure. It definitely messes with your breathing. I had super, crazy headaches. We had the same symptoms as everybody else. We’re in shape, but it attacks your lungs.
“After those days were up, I was completely fine. We were lucky in Texas we were allowed to go run in the parks. I never did that before but I got back in shape.”
Gordon and teammates still talk about those experiences and especially the night that changed everything.
“It was an amazing time, for sure,” Gordon said. “There was nothing like this one.”
Questions on logistics and health
The Rockets were not sure when the day began where it would end. The team met with Brown to go over where things stood, but that would all change in the coming hours. They practiced at Toyota Center while the board of governors held a conference call meeting and Rockets team owner Tilman Fertitta advocated to pause the season rather than play in empty arenas.
The scheduled flight to Los Angeles was pushed from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. The league initially decided the game would be played in an empty Staples Center. But after the Rockets boarded their usual charter, things took an unusual turn entirely unrelated to the pandemic and everything it would soon bring.
The charter company had a licensing issue, forcing it to ground the flight. The team and staff got off the plane with Jones, equipment manager Tony Nila and Landry’s executive vice president Mark Monsma scrambling to arrange for four small private jets to get the team and staff to Los Angeles.
The first charter landed, the second finished its flight and the third, over El Paso when word arrived that the season was halted, turned around and came back to Houston. The fourth never left.
Jones, Nila, director of security Bryant Savage and player development assistant Robbie Keck were in Pappasito’s waiting for the Southwest flight they had to take because the equipment was too heavy for the private jets.
“We sat down to watch the Utah and OKC game,” Jones said. “Robbie is on his Twitter and said, “Hey, something is going on. They’re not going to play the game. Somebody tested positive for COVID. They’re canceling the game.’
“It keeps going to ‘they’re not going to play any games tonight.’ We had an hour to our flight. I got a call from Daryl (Morey.) He said, ‘Hold tight. Have those flights left?’ I said, ‘Everyone’s gone.’ Tad calls three minutes later and said, ‘The LA game’s been canceled.’ He told me they are canceling the next three days of games and we need to bring everybody back.”
Nila, Jones and Keck scrambled to get the equipment off the Southwest flight. Jones went to work on getting players and staff that landed in Los Angeles back to town. But that was just the start of the whirlwind.
Jones had met with Rockets team physician James Muntz two weeks earlier to learn what he could, leading him to stock up on masks and begin requiring them on flights long before it became routine. But information was scarce and questions were soon constant.
“That’s all I knew at that point,” Jones said. “We had no idea, like everyone else, what was going on, how serious it was. Before the term contact tracing, that’s what everybody was doing. ‘When did we play the Jazz last? Who officiated those games? When did we have that official?’ That’s when they put it all together, hey this thing is serious.
“Then the questions were, ‘If I get it, how sick am I going to get?’ At that point, everyone was ignorant.
“Players were calling every day. Coaches were calling. Tad and I talked constantly, every hour. I was talking to trainers, medical people from the league. Tad is talking to Adam. And then the players were calling. I started group texting any information I had. ‘Stay put. Stay home. Tell us if you need anything, if your family needs anything.’
“When are we going to play again?”
“I don’t know.”
“When can we practice? When can we come to the facility?”
“I don’t know. I wish I knew what to tell you. But I don’t know.”
‘Everybody was terrified’
As the news of each positive test around the league spread, Brown said “Everyone was terrified. Nobody knew how it was being spread.”
Individual workouts were permitted for a few days and then prohibited. Plans changed rapidly. The league game plan was written and executed at the same time.
“We’ve seen a lot and I’ve been through a lot in 20 years. But it was truly a different feeling because you didn’t really have an understanding of what was coming,” Brown said. “I’m not sure anybody knew how to plan or what to project. You realize this was something nobody had been through before. This wasn’t the Malice at the Palace. This wasn’t a hurricane. It was something that was going to require more understanding.
“We’re managing it better now because we understand the situation we face. In certain respects, we’re still trying to make our way through based on the information we’re given on a regular basis.
“But that was truly a wild, wild day. It was a crazy time.”
jonathan.feigen@chron.com
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