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The Warriors went from playing in front of a not-quite capacity, but still 10-plus thousand person crowd, to preparing to play in front of an empty arena, to being on hiatus, along with the rest of the NBA, in less that 48 hours. Warriors COO Rick Welts said on Wednesday morning that the prospect of canceling games hadn’t come up in his discussions with the San Francisco mayor’s office.
Then, right before the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder tipped off, a Jazz doctor came sprinting out on the court. After the game was postponed, it was quickly reported that Jazz center Rudy Gobert had tested positive for the coronavirus, and soon after, teammate Donovan Mitchell did too. Kerr was on KNBR as the beginning of the news broke and he spoke to The Athletic’s Anthony Slater about the last 48 hours.
Kerr said the Warriors will not practice “any time soon” and that the players should treat this time like the All-Star Break. More than anything, what Kerr talked about is how much he’s learned over the last hours, studying the pandemic. He said he feels “like a fool”:
“It’s really scary,” Kerr said. “You don’t want people to panic. On the other hand, don’t go to a fucking concert. But then again, who am I to say that? I was coaching in a basketball game with 15,000 fans like four nights ago. So I feel like a fool.
But this goes back to our human condition of denial and vulnerability. But we’ve crossed that threshold now and it’s important that everybody understands what they can do.
The good thing is there are some examples in South Korea and China where they have done social distancing and it appears the bell curve of the disease is trending in the right direction.”
