Going Viral

“Fear, left unchecked, can spread like a virus”

– Lish McBride, Necromancing the Stone

Turns out a virus can spread plenty of fear all by itself. After having spent the last few days at a long-planned and poorly attended conference, the only topic on anyone’s mind seemed to be avoiding contact at nearly all costs. Having already avoided flights to my destination, I ended up spending much of my 60 hours there watching the sessions online from my hotel room, with a few forays out to the most important reasons I’d gone. It was a weird balance, knowing that part of the reason I’d attended was to make connections with some important people, and wanting to simply steer clear of something that may at this point be mathematically unavoidable for many of us. It was amazing, awe-inspiring, and heart-wrenching all at once to see the massive impacts a single something could have on so many people, jobs, moments, and interactions.

Which still made it no less stunning that the NBA swiftly and correctly decided to put their season on pause for a month, or possibly more, after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus, with his next-door locker neighbor Donovan Mitchell testing positive shortly thereafter. The announcement came out during the Denver Nuggets contest against the Dallas Mavericks, possibly the last game to be played in this NBA season. Within hours, most other professional leagues and collegiate sports out there had postponed or cancelled seasons, tourneys, and all the rest. NBA Players and staffs who have played against the Jazz over the last two weeks are taking precautions of their own, and no one has yet reported further spread, but this tiny virus stopped more than a seven-footer in his tracks, it shut down an operation that made 8.76 Billion-with-a-B dollars last year.

Those B-B-Billions are simply the tip of a much bigger iceberg in terms of the breadth and depth of sports shutdowns. There are several billion more dollars not currently being made by the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, March Madness, and the list goes on. Those stoppages also impact the revenue of the workers at the venues, the businesses surrounding them, the media that cover them, and so many more. By the time you consider the impact this could have in simply this one aspect of today’s society, the ramifications are deep and monumental. Not every person, family, business, or community has there wherewithal to outlast “shutting it down” for 30 days, let alone double, triple, or more. Your heart goes out to every person impacted by the dominos that fall in moments like this.

And those dominos are you at this point, sports fan. No matter who you are or what you do, this is impacting your life, job, studies, family, and capability to simply get things done. Even if you’re somehow miraculously not directly impacted by the spread of COVID-19 today, it’s certainly impacting someone you know and love. As a sports fan, the timing also has the secondary impact of taking away one or many of your favorite escapist pastimes right at a moment when you could really use something a little less lethal or emergent to focus upon.

Geez, a little bleak and bleary to start your sports weekend, huh, Nuggets Nation? Even weirder to be Friday the 13th. Is there a positive to be found in this cluster? There are probably many, but one of the first that comes to mind is this:

One of the great metaphors that overarches these sports we love and follow is that teamwork and sacrifice are the recipe to winning even the toughest of battles. In this moment, and as counterintuitive as it sounds, you just went from inactive observer to active participant on this team. And the best way you can help this team succeed is to be responsible and not cavalier in your actions around others, but also not panic or overreact. If you now own enough toilet paper to have a small percentage of stock in Charmin, please dial it down a notch or seven. But beyond being responsible in caring for yourself and others by doing your small part in not spreading this nasty thing any further, you can also notice those around you who are being impacted or are in need and offer help in a moment in which we are all being impacted. In which we are all being inconvenienced. Do your neighbor a solid, and keep us all running a little further, if you can. Life will return to your regularly scheduled sports programming soon enough, my friends. In this moment, we’re all on the team, and if we all do our part, we’ll be on the far side of this thing soon to watch our favorite teams and debate matters a little less dire.

Be good to one another out there. Maybe your kindness will go viral.