NBA, NHL, MLB, NCAA SUSPEND PLAY

The updates keep coming like a tsunami On Wednesday afternoon, the NCAA announced that its basketball tournament would be played in empty arenas, and the sold-out 3/13 Tame Impala concert at San Francisco’s Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors, was postponed.

Wednesday night, Tom Hanks tweeted from Australia that he and Rita Wilson have been infected with COVID-19. And after Utah Jazz all-star forward Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus, the NBA wasted no time suspending its season until further notice.

Jazz players, coaches and staff were quarantined in Oklahoma City, where they were about to play the Thunder at Chesapeake Energy Arena. Gobert was not in the arena, and Thunder players were cleared to go home. But players from teams the Jazz have played within the past 10 days were told to self-quarantine, ESPN reported. Those teams are the Cleveland Cavaliers, New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors.

Cameras captured Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban learning the news during ESPN’s broadcast of Dallas’ 113-97 victory over the visiting Denver Nuggets—the last NBA game to be played for the foreseeable future. During a subsequent interview, Cuban said his initial reaction was, “This is crazy. This can’t be true. I mean, it’s not within the realm of possibility. It seemed more like out of a movie than reality…

“It’s really not about basketball or money,” Cuban continued, still processing. “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.”

After the game, Cuban said teams have been told they can continue to practice, adding that players have been told they should not have visitors from out of town.

On the macro level, then, the cable sports networks are scrambling to fill a massive hole in their programming; the cable new networks have the opposite problem, as they try to keep up with a barrage of breaking news.

It contuned Thursdsy afternoon with the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament, while Major League Baseball decided to delay the opening of the season for at least two weeks and canceled the rest of spring training.

Statement from Major League Baseball: pic.twitter.com/0bWS5VTRPu

— MLB (@MLB) March 12, 2020