Around Monday around 4:30 p.m. local time, Rudy Gobert walked out of the 21c Museum Hotel in the west side of downtown Oklahoma City and boarded a bus to take the seven-block trip to Chesapeake Energy Arena.
Nine and a half months ago, Gobert walked out of the same hotel and got into a car to be taken about 20 blocks to the University of Oklahoma Medical Center to be tested for COVID-19. It seemed like an ominous Gobert had the coronavirus, but after suffering negative tests for strep and flu, he got a swab in his nose. Less than 24 hours later – just about 10 minutes before the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz were due to ship on March 11 – he tested positive for the virus and began a series of events that changed the NBA forever … and the sports world as a whole.
On Monday, Gobert took the long walk down the hall to the dressing room he had never seen in March, the one in which his teammates were locked up for hours, with strangers and fears surrounding them as they sat in a circle with blue surgical gloves and masks waiting for health officials to show up to test them.
“I walked into my office and remembered how I spent some time there,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said Monday with a smile. “I would not call it PTSD because it is not that extreme, but there are definitely memories.”
Monday’s game was a full circle moment for Gobert and the Jazz, with the flood of memories inevitable, though they did not want to make it a focus of the night. They did not spend too much time on it, Snyder said, but little things, such as being at the same hotel, seeing the locker room, or walking to a court without fans, serve as a reminder.
‘I had the same [hotel] room, believe it or not, “Donovan Mitchell said. Which is ironic. “
The Jazz won the game 110-109, with Mitchell hitting a runner by seven seconds to provide the final margin. The Thunder had a chance to win at the buzzer, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander riding to his right, but Gobert and his albatross arms contested the shot. Gilgeous-Alexander’s imposition was short, Gobert grabbed the rebound and the buzzer sounded with the ball in his hands.
“It’s just basketball. I was just focused on trying to win,” Gobert said. “The one [big] thing was to be at the same hotel again, all the memories. It was a little weird. ‘
Gobert’s life changed in March when he tested positive a few days after touching reporters’ recorders on a table in front of him, and saw the light of day with the new protocols the league introduced to separate players and media from the spread of the virus. He became the NBA’s patient zero, with his negligence an example. He accepted responsibility and apologized, then fought the virus for two weeks and dealt with severe symptoms, which included months without being able to taste or smell.
“Rudy was scolded and in retrospect we have a greater understanding of the virus,” Snyder said. ‘I think Rudy fully realizes that some mistakes have been made, and that the mistakes have been made time and time again by different people, all of us.
“At that moment, it was such an important thing; and in Rudy’s case, he had a chance to process it. We always challenge ourselves when we’ve had adversity, to make you better, and I think Rudy came out of this. “In a place where it grows. Not just Rudy, but all of us.”
Much has changed since March – people, places, things.
“It’s the same year. It’s still the same year,” Mitchell said. “It feels like it was forever ago, but I don’t think we thought about it too much. We had a moment where we got here, and it was like, ‘Okay, we’re back.'”
The game in March was also a turning point for the Gobert-Mitchell relationship, with tensions mounting over the transmission of the virus after Mitchell tested positive the next day. The whole chemistry of the Jazz dressing room was in question, and many openly wondered if something would have to be given. Would the Jazz trade one of their stars? Can they work it out?
Mitchell admitted that it took a while to cool down, and the two went on for a long time without talking. When the NBA resumed in the Florida bubble, Gobert and Mitchell were forced to confront the issue and repair the rift. They again have a common goal as the unifier: to win.
Monday’s game was appropriate for many reasons, but to let Mitchell hit the pull and give Gobert the winning stop shows the formula on which the Jazz built their hopes. Snyder referred to the growth the team experienced that night in March, but it goes deeper than winning a basketball game nearly ten months later.
“I think we all have so much greater appreciation for what we consider a normal life,” the coach said. “You can not help but remember that night; it was important for both teams, really for the league. But also the contrast between that point and where we are now, the season, the break, the bubble, to return come and play again – it seems like a lifetime since it happened. ‘