Thursday 12 March 2020 08:43, UK
It started as a joke. Before leaving a post-practice interview session Rudy Gobert touched all the tape recorders that were placed before him on a table, devices that reporters who cover the Utah Jazz were using during an availability with him on Monday before a game with the Detroit Pistons.
It isn't so funny now.
Gobert is now the NBA's 'Patient Zero' for coronavirus after becoming the first player in the league to test positive, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press.
The 7ft 1in Frenchman is at the centre of why the league has been shut down for the foreseeable future.
Utah's game against Oklahoma City on Wednesday night was cancelled and the Pistons are among five teams that have played the Jazz and Gobert since the start of March, the others being Boston, Toronto, New York and Cleveland.
Gobert shared the court with 50 opposing players in those games, plus 15 referees.
One of the refs was Courtney Kirkland, who was to work the New Orleans Pelicans-Sacramento Kings game on Wednesday that got cancelled because he had been on the court with Gobert two nights earlier, and who knows how many ballboys, stat-crew employees, security guards, attendants and others did as well.
Then there are Gobert's own team-mates and the Jazz coaches and staff. And everyone he has been on a plane with in recent days. Or shared a hotel elevator with. Or dined with. Or shook hands with. And so on, and so on.
"I am sure I probably had contact with him," Detroit's Langston Galloway said. "Staying focused on that moment of interaction with a lot of different people and knowing that at the end of the day you might have touched the ball, you might have interacted with a fan and just being [cautious] with that going forward."
The shutdown could cost teams well into the hundreds of millions of dollars depending on how long the hiatus lasts. Those teams that have faced Gobert in recent days will likely face some testing. And some of those Jazz reporters said they were getting tested for coronavirus, just in case.
"It is unprecedented," Detroit Pistons coach Dwane Casey said. "I think it is the prudent thing to do. And what went on in Utah, I don't know all the information but that just shows you how fragile everything is right now."
This is the reality of the coronavirus, which was labelled a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on Wednesday.
Charlotte coach James Borrego said these are scary times in the NBA, and no one argued.
"They are all concerned and rightfully so," Casey said. "Everybody in our league should be concerned. I think everybody in our country right now, more than just basketball, is concerned. We all have to take care of ourselves and look out for our fellow man."
That is what Orlando's Evan Fournier did on Wednesday night.
Fournier, a French national team-mate of Gobert, reached out to his compatriot after news of the diagnosis and leaguewide shutdown broke.
"Was just on the phone with Rudy," Fournier wrote. "He is doing good, man. Let's not [panic] everyone. Love you all."
