I’ve been a Dallas Mavericks fan since first moving to this area in 1980. I’ve been privileged to attend many games over the years and occasionally interact with the players.
Such accessibility and proximity to the fans is one way basketball games are different from football, baseball, and hockey. There’s much less risk of a basketball injuring a bystander compared to batted baseballs; there are no hockey sticks or pucks to threaten us; there are no behemoths in football pads to injure themselves or us. (Although standing next to seven-foot-tall players is a bit surreal.)
But the coronavirus epidemic is changing much about our
culture, not least our basketball experience.
The Mavericks announced recently that the high-five line that forms in the tunnel leading to the court before home games will be discontinued. The team says this is about protecting fans and players. It would only take one infection transmission to make the longstanding practice a threat to both.
At this stage in the epidemic, it’s hard to predict what other cultural casualties we will see from the virus. School closings, everyone working from home, a huge impact on retail and restaurants, massive crowds at hospitals—these are all as possible here as anywhere else. This virus can infect anyone, meaning that it can infect everyone.
Size and athleticism are not enough. NBA players are some of
the finest athletes on the planet. The shortest of them is as tall as most of
us; the tallest of them seem like a different species. They can do things with
(and to) their bodies that the rest of us cannot imagine.
But a virus roughly one-900th the width of a
human hair threatens them, despite their athletic superiority, just as it
threatens the rest of us.
The best way to live on this planet
This is the way mortality works. NBA players are unlikely to die of lung cancer from smoking since I cannot imagine that any of them smoke. They will not die from…
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