Los Angeles Times - 13.03.2020

(ff) #1

LATIMES.COM/SPORTS FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2020D3


For basketball, the tip-
ping point felt sudden and
shocking, a player testing
positive for the coronavirus,
an NBA game halted before
tipoff and fans asked to leave
the arena in an orderly man-
ner.
For the rest of profes-
sional sports in the U.S., the
ensuing reaction was utterly
predictable.
The NHL and Major
League Soccer called for an
immediate suspension of
regular-season play on
Thursday and Major League
Baseball put a stop to spring
training, delaying the start
of the regular season by at
least two weeks.
“MLB will announce the
effects on the schedule at an
appropriate time,” the
league said in a statement,
adding that it will “remain
flexible as events warrant,
with the hope of resuming
operations as soon as pos-
sible.”
The various league head-
quarters had been grappling
with the issue for days, won-
dering what sort of action
they should take, hoping to
buy time.
It seems their hands were
ultimately forced not only by
a steady growth in reported
COVID-19 cases nationwide
but also by governments in
states such as California,
New York, Ohio and Wash-
ington, which placed signifi-
cant restrictions on large
public gatherings.
“The NHL has been at-
tempting to follow the man-
dates of health experts and
local authorities, while pre-
paring for any possible de-
velopments without taking
premature or unnecessary
measures,” NHL Commis-
sioner Gary Bettman said in
a statement.
“However, following last
night’s news that an NBA
player has tested positive for
coronavirus ... it is no longer
appropriate to try to contin-
ue to play games at this
time.”
There were 1,323 reported
cases and 38 deaths nation-
wide as of late Thursday. In
calling for no gatherings


that exceed 250 people in
California, Gov. Gavin New-
som spoke about “all of us
making the right choice.”
Still, the decision to sus-
pend play was difficult for
hockey.
Teams had just entered
the stretch run of the regular
season, jockeying for posi-
tion with the playoffs sched-
uled to begin in mid-April.
League executives did not
specify if postseason berths
might have to be based on
standings after Wednes-
day’s games or through
some kind of play-in tourna-
ment.
It’s also unclear whether
players will be permitted to
practice in their respective
teams’ facilities, a question
Kings President Luc Ro-
bitaille said he expects to be
resolved by the league
within 24 hours.
Bettman noted that
many of his franchises share
arenas with NBA teams.
“It now seems likely that
some member of the NHL
community would test pos-
itive at some point,” he
stated.
From an economic per-
spective, the NHL has less-

lucrative television and
sponsorship deals than
some other leagues, making
it more reliant on gate re-
ceipts.
That impact would un-
doubtedly be felt by ushers,
vendors, ticket-takers and
other arena employees, as
well as employees in restau-
rants and bars near arenas
and stadiums.
AEG — the parent com-
pany of the Kings — is poised
to make some kind of accom-
modation for arena employ-
ees, Chief Operating Officer
Kelly Cheeseman said, add-
ing: “I can tell you that con-
versation is happening not
only locally but I think
across the nation at this
point.”
Ducks owners Henry and
Susan Samueli have told
staff members who were
scheduled to work March
events at Honda Center that
they will be paid even though
events there have been post-
poned through March 31.
The Kings and the Ducks
supported the league’s deci-
sion. “These unprecedented
steps are being taken for the
betterment and well-being
of a community we are proud

to be part of,” the Ducks said
in a statement.
Baseball faced a different
scenario with opening day
scheduled for March 26. The
league had considered shift-
ing games away from hard-
hit states or regions as an al-
ternative to postponement
but had met with push-back.
Public health experts
told The Times that, with
the limited availability of co-
ronavirus tests, it would be
folly to assume the virus had
not spread to any given area
of the country, even ones
with few reported cases.
On Thursday morning,
before MLB issued its deci-
sion, the wife of Washington
Nationals pitcher Sean
Doolittle pleaded with fans
to stay away from spring
training.
“I’m probably not sup-
posed to say this, but people
I beg of you, please do not
come to games right now,”
Eireann Dolan wrote on
Twitter. “I know they’re still
inexplicably playing them
right now, but that doesn’t
mean it’s safe to attend.
You’re putting yourselves,
the staffs, and teams at risk.
Please don’t go.”

“It’s not just athletes,”
Dodgers infielder Gavin Lux
said before the MLB an-
nouncement. “It’s every-
body in the whole world.”
Dodgers manager Dave
Roberts said “a best-case
scenario” would be to play all
162 games, with postponed
games from the first weeks of
the season tacked onto the
end.
A shortened baseball
season would not be without
precedent. In 1995, when
players struck, owners
agreed to an abbreviated
spring training and reduced
the regular season from 162
games to 144.
The hiatus might not be
as significant for pro soccer,
which began its season a
couple of weeks ago. Though
MLS executives will sus-
pend play for at least 30
days, they remained confi-
dent that rescheduling
would allow for a full 34
games.
“Our clubs are united in
the decision to temporarily
suspend our season,” MLS
Commissioner Don Garber
said in a statement. The
league, he added, was acting
on guidance from the Cen-

ters for Disease Control and
Prevention, the Public
Health Agency of Canada
and other public health au-
thorities.
Like his counterparts in
other leagues, Garber had
been struggling with how to
proceed earlier in the week,
especially after local govern-
ments banned large gather-
ings in cities where the San
Jose Earthquakes and Seat-
tle Sounders play their
home games.
The second-tier USL
Championship league,
which has four teams in Cali-
fornia, also suspended play
and the U.S. Soccer Federa-
tion canceled friendly
matches the men’s and
women’s teams had sched-
uled in the coming weeks.
CONCACAF, the re-
gional governing body for
soccer, suspended the
Champions League tourna-
ment that was to have fea-
tured LAFC playing Mexi-
co’s Cruz Azul in the
quarterfinals Thursday at
Banc of California Stadium.
That game was called off
early Thursday and it is un-
certain when the tourna-
ment will resume.
No decision was an-
nounced regarding the
CONCACAF Olympic quali-
fying men’s soccer tourna-
ment in Guadalajara, Mexi-
co, scheduled to begin
March 20.
In other sports, the PGA
Tour canceled a string of
tournaments, including the
rest of the Players Champi-
onship, and the LPGA Tour
postponed three events, two
of them in California. The
NFL, still months from
training camp, called off its
annual meetings in Florida
but plans to proceed with
the draft in late April. The
Long Beach Grand Prix, set
for April 16-18, has been post-
poned.
Talking about the signifi-
cant changes that have
swept across the rest of the
sports landscape, Ducks
coach Dallas Eakins at-
tempted to put things into
perspective.
“Obviously there’s a
breakout of the virus and I
think we need a massive
breakout of kindness,” he
said. “I think we need a mas-
sive breakout of alertness.”

Staff writers Kevin Baxter,
Jorge Castillo, Helene
Elliott and Bill Shaikin
contributed to this story.

Virus causes more sports to take action


MLB, MLS and NFL


follow NBA lead in


suspending operations


indefinitely.


By David Wharton


MINNESOTA TWINScatcher Mitch Garver is alone in an empty Hammond Stadium dugout in Fort Myers,
Fla. Major League Baseball has suspended the rest of its spring training schedule.

Elise AmendolaAssociated Press

The final hours of the col-
lege basketball season started
with a two-paragraph news
release.
An hour and a half before
the opening game of the
American Athletic Confer-
ence tournament in Fort
Worth, the conference can-
celed the four-day event be-
cause of the coronavirus out-
break. The Big Ten Confer-
ence canceled its tournament
minutes later. The Southeast-
ern Conference, Pac-12 and a
slew of other conferences did
the same in a day without par-
allel.
The NCAA capped Thurs-
day’s frantic series of events
by canceling its tournament
for the first time in the event’s
81 years.
“There was no reasonable
way to go forward with the
tournament,” said Jay Bilas,
the ESPN college basketball
analyst who played for Duke.
“Nobody had a choice. The
NCAA had the obligation to
be a responsible global citizen
and do its part to slow the
spread of the virus.”
The decision, coming after
the NBA, MLB, NHL and
other professional sports
leagues suspended their sea-
sons, brought an abrupt end
to the month-long tourna-
ment typically filled with Cin-
derellas, shining moments
and busted brackets that’s a
fixture in American life.
Less than 24 hours earlier,
the NCAA had taken the un-
precedented step of barring
fans from the tournament and
planning to play games in
empty arenas. Several confer-
ences had done the same and
closed their locker rooms in
an attempt to limit the spread
of the coronavirus. But the Ivy


League, which drew criticism
for canceling its tournament
Tuesday, had been the lone
conference to take such a
drastic step.
The equation changed
Wednesday night when Rudy
Gobert of the NBA’s Utah
Jazz tested positive for the co-
ronavirus and the NBA im-
mediately suspended its sea-
son.
“In view of what happened
with the NBA, and in view of
the progressive nature of this
virus and the pandemic na-
ture and the fact that the
curve is still unfortunately go-
ing up,” Mike Aresco, the AAC
commissioner, told reporters
Thursday, “and the fact that
you could have a situation
where, you know, evidence
showed up afterwards of a stu-
dent-athlete having this and a
lot of other student-athletes
could potentially be exposed,
we felt the risk was not worth
it....”
Half a dozen conferences,
led by the AAC, canceled their
tournaments in a 20-minute
span.

USC senior Jonah Ma-
thews woke up fellow senior
Nick Rakocevic in their Las
Vegas hotel room with the Big
Ten tournament news.
“I was like, ‘Wow, that
means that’s it for us?’ ” Rako-
cevic recalled. “He said, ‘You
think so?’ And I was like, ‘Bro,
give it an hour. They’re going
to cancel this too.’ ”
USC assistant Jason Hart
tweeted a few minutes later:
“If other conferences aren’t
playing why are we?!”
At the same time, first re-
ports surfaced that the Pac-12
was canceling its tournament.
By the time the flurry of
statements and news confer-
ences ended, all 58 Division I
men’s games and 24 Division I
women’s games scheduled for
Thursday — and scores more
in the coming days — had
been canceled. The speed of
the developments created
awkward and unexpected
situations across the country.
Before Thursday’s games
at the Atlantic Coast Confer-
ence tournament in Greens-
boro, N.C., Commissioner

John Swofford told reporters
the games would continue as
scheduled.
“There’s risk in every path
you take with something like
this,” he said.
The direction changed a
couple of hours later, after a
discussion involving confer-
ence presidents and athletic
directors. The tournament
was canceled.
Swofford referred to an
“extraordinarily fluid situa-
tion” with changing informa-
tion. Florida State coach
Leonard Hamilton, whose
team won the regular season
and had been scheduled to
play Clemson in a quarter-
final, accepted the champi-
onship trophy in an empty
arena.
Adding to the growing feel-
ing that the NCAA tourna-
ment couldn’t be conducted
after so many cancellations,
Duke, home to the 10th-
ranked team in the country, is-
sued a statement suspending
all athletic competition. One
of the most storied programs
in the country had, in effect,

pulled out of the tournament.
“We emphatically support
the decision,” coach Mike
Krzyzewski said.
The Big East was the last
major conference to cancel its
tournament, doing so at half-
time of the St. John’s-Creigh-
ton game at Madison Square
Garden in New York. Val Ack-
erman, the Big East commis-
sioner, told reporters the con-
ference allowed the game to
continue because “we didn’t
feel like we needed a dramatic,
pull the players off the court in
the middle of the game ges-
ture.”
Zach Bohannon, who
played for Wisconsin in the
2014 Final Four, was driving to
Indianapolis to watch his
brother Jordan play for Iowa
in the Big Ten tournament.
“They keep thinking this
evolving situation would get
better, but obviously it has not
and will continue to get
worse,” Zach Bohannon said
of the NCAA. “Playing in the
Final Four is a heck of an expe-
rience, but it should never
come at the risk of the stu-
dent-athletes who are playing
the game.”
The NCAA remained
silent, at least publicly, as the
cancellations poured in. The
most recent news release on
the organization’s media site
for several hours Thursday
concerned an enforcement
matter.
The parent of one player
whose team would be a
high seed in the women’s tour-
nament noted each cancella-
tion and worried her daugh-
ter, who has a preexisting
health issue, would be forced
to travel for March Madness
games as the coronavirus
spreads.
“It’s absolutely been
crazy,” said the mother, who
spoke on the condition she
not be identified because of
the sensitivity of the situation.
“I just pray. ... I don’t want her
around anything like that.”
The questions about the
NCAA’s next move ended at
1:16 p.m., 4^1 ⁄ 2 hours after the

conference tournament can-
cellations started.
Cori Close, coach of
UCLA’s 10th-ranked women’s
team, got the news on her
smartphone.
“The NCAA tournament is
canceled,” she said, her voice
shaking and face flushing
with disappointment.
Mick Cronin, the first-year
UCLA men’s coach and the
Pac-12 coach of the year,
learned of the cancellation
from a reporter’s text mes-
sage shortly after the team’s
plane landed in Los Angeles.
“The plane literally just
landed and messages were
just coming through,” Cronin
said.
Not only did the NCAA
cancel the men’s and women’s
basketball tournaments, but
all remaining winter tourna-
ments and all spring tourna-
ments.
“This decision is based on
the evolving [coronavirus]
public health threat, our abil-
ity to ensure the events do not
contribute to spread of the
pandemic, and the impracti-
cality of hosting such events
at any time during this aca-
demic year given ongoing de-
cisions by other entities,” the
NCAA’s statement said.
The decision that seemed
more inevitable with each
passing hour Thursday
brought relief, disappoint-
ment and confusion among a
variety of reactions that mir-
rored the country’s dawning
realization that the co-
ronavirus will disrupt some of
our most loved events.
“It’s painful, it’s disap-
pointing for so many players
and coaches,” Bilas said.
“There are so many stories
that are heart-wrenching in
this. But it all pales in compar-
ison to the global pandemic. ...
We can all quarrel over the
timing, but ultimately the
NCAA did the right thing.”

Times staff writers Ben
Bolch, Ryan Kartje and
Thuc Nhi Nguyen
contributed to this report.

One resigning moment: NCAAs canceled


Outbreak brings a


sudden end to sports


fixture for the first


time in event history.


By Nathan Fenno


A SIGNposted at the American Athletic Conference tournament in Fort Worth
was a precursor to the cancellation of the NCAA tournament.

Richard RodriguezAssociated Press

COVID-19 IN SPORTS

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