Mavs & NBA News: DFW Sports Within the Sound of Silence - And A Fight To Survive
DALLAS - On Wednesday morning, the city of Dallas was considered a sports city. Just like it was any other day of the week in any other month out of the year. The professional teams that line the Metroplex aided this fact; from the Dallas Wings to the Texas Rangers to the XFL, sports encompass and soothe this city in a way that might seem foreign to some outsiders.
Yet, on Wednesday night, a death rattle stifled that.
During the early evening, it festered calmly against the damp goose-grey of a once-lively corridor, typifying that of stifled coughs and eager sneezes which were caught inside the sleeve of an unknowing inch of cloth.
But this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill death rattle.
Or maybe it is, which is more damning than any metaphorical jibber-jabber we throw around in terms of sports. It’s a living, breathing, dry-coughing fact.
And it’s here.
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You used to be able to count them as their oppositions usually did – the Dallas tin soldiers wrapped in cerulean, wearing expressions of masked paranoia and nonchalant contempt reserved for those wearing whistles around their necks.
One by one, two by two, they marched between the ropes down that very grey corridor on Wednesday following their 113-97 over the visiting Denver Nuggets. The corridor was still lively at this moment, the mirth riding high off the win and the leftover adrenaline that seeped from it. The fans were still feeling it as well as they watched the soldiers step off the hardwood, perhaps, one last time this season.
Standing shoulder to shoulder (the six-to-eight-feet-distance media warning seemed farfetched momentarily and, of course, didn’t apply to them – those last few minutes of the game took on a “love thy neighbor” comedic twist) the Dallas Mavericks fans drifted in and out of basketball ecstasy before having to face the "Black Swan'' reality of the outside world, a reality that already had most basketball arenas and fans inside a chokehold.
Across the state line, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Utah Jazz were sequestered inside two separate locker rooms, pacing most likely, as they waited to be tested for COVID-19. Rudy Gobert of the Jazz tested positive for the virus, which brought on the sudden game postponement heard around the world.
Gobert, in a recklessly joking fashion, mocked the NBA’s newly set rules requiring that members of the media keep that distance from the players themselves. He did this by quickly touching all the phones and microphones that were placed on the interview table in front of him before walking away.
At the time, the soft laughter from the people in the room seemed to thinly veil the inevitable portent.
On Tuesday, Gobert started feeling symptoms of the virus. Late Wednesday evening, the crowds were silenced. (Gobert has since donated $500,000 to the fight.) And on Thursday, the MLB, the NCAA, the NHL had joined in on the silence.
One by one, the dominos fell. The NBA Playoffs, March Madness, MLB Spring Training and Opening Day – bing, bang, boom – all gagged for the time being. ... as we await the NFL either following suit ... or standing pat, with its full hand, knowing its free agency shopping and its NFL Draft can own the sporting headlines.
Oh, those headlines ...
NFL Plans On as President Trump Declares National Emergency
Cuban: Coronavirus Could Mean NBA Hiatus Now, With Finals in August
Report: NBA Telling Teams Coronavirus Suspension 'Aspirational Timeline' is 30 Days
Mavs and Sponsor Chime to Financially Support Sideline AAC Workers
'Doomsday Provision': What's It Really Mean For NBA Players to Beware?
For now, the sports world that often serves as a distraction from our own fast-paced and anxiety-ridden lives has been muffled by an international force no one could physically see.
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Death already came for the sports world in 2020. On January 26, Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and nine others showed the world how utterly fragile human beings are. The larger-than-life Bryant proved that even superhero giants are merely human and are able to be expunged like a candle flame in a hurricane.
During our grief, we were able to turn to the world that Kobe reigned over: Sports. We threw ourselves into the game as we had done countless times after tragedy struck.
In 2013 during the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, baseball cities united with the home of the Boston Red Sox and played Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” (the Sox famous eighth-inning sing-along song) at every ballpark. Yes, their arch-nemesis, the New York Yankees, even played it. The avoirdupois of 9/11 couldn’t hold down fans, even after our entire world violently shifted in a matter of hours. Americans struggled to find normalcy inside the darkness that befell our country in those following weeks, and they did so with sports.
After every tragedy, sports became the cushion we used to distract ourselves from, well, own mortality. All these happenings became the disconsolate mirror we were forced to look into and recognize that yes, we too are human and cannot cheat the system. But we always were able to get lost inside a different, and fierce, world of competitive sports.
Now what?
The basketballs go unused, the bats untouched, the footballs unsure, the soldiers of the courts and diamonds and fields go quiet as the world goes on lockdown, freeing up individual minds to roam and contemplate the inevitable. It’s times like these when we realize how vastly important the sports world is to our own mental psyche. But the hiatus is necessary. You know it and I know it. It’s vital if we want to still HAVE a sports world six months from now.
We’re facing a fight that is not a game and it’s one we need to win in order to continue being distracted by a world a large majority look to for comfort. And as hard as it might be, we need to support this long period of silence so we can continue to play and cheer. And survive.
