Sports provide comfort to fans during difficult times. So when leagues start cancelling games, we know the world is deeply changed
What was startling was just how quickly it all ended. The New Orleans Pelicans and Sacramento Kings didn’t even get a chance to play what was going to be the final NBA game for the foreseeable future. One of the officials working the game, it turns out, had previously worked a game featuring Rudy Gobert, the
Utah Jazz star who had just tested positive for Covid-19. With that, one of the most surreal seasons in
basketball history came to a halt. The NBA has suspended 2019-20 NBA season, and no one knows if and when the league will resume.
The season began, ominously enough, with an earthquake. On 6 July last year, a 7.1
earthquake struck southern
California, and its effects could be felt as far away as
Las Vegas, where the
New York Knicks and the Pelicans were playing their first preseason game. No one was injured but after a 15-minute delay, the game was called off out as a precaution. It was the first cancellation of the season; it would not be the last.