Danilo Gallinari was one of the first players in the NBA to speak on the global spread of the coronavirus.
Even before Rudy Gobert’s positive test ahead of Oklahoma City’s matchup against the Utah Jazz on March 11, Gallinari was already advocating for the league to play games without fans in the stands.
The first-year Thunder forward has been no stranger to the coronavirus and COVID-19, the subsequent illness that it causes, prior to its impact on the NBA.
Because he’s been watching it wreak havoc on his home country of Italy for weeks.
Which is why he told Marc Stein of The New York Times that although there was surprise surrounding the suddenness of Gobert’s positive test results, OKC’s canceled game, and the subsequent postponement of the NBA season, he was “a little less shocked than anybody else knowing what’s going in on my country.”
“It’s something serious. I see in Italy, right now, for the situation to get better, citizens — they have to behave in the right way and follow the lines and the rules that the government came out with. It’s not just a government thing or a hospital thing. It’s more like a team. We have to be a team.”
According to Stein, the grandmother of Gallinari’s close childhood friend has already died after contracting the virus in her native Northern Italy.
Although the country did impose a mandatory lockdown to try and try and slow the spread of the virus, Gallinari believes that people didn’t take it seriously enough at the onset, and hopes that the United States takes steps to avoid the situation that is now playing out within Italy.
“It was a mistake that we did as Italian citizens, and I put myself in, too, because I’m Italian even if I live in the States. Of course we did a mistake not taking it seriously in Italy and now we are the second- or third-worst country in the world for this virus. Hopefully we’re not going to make the same mistake in the States.”
Initially, Adam Silver announced that the NBA would be on a 30-day hiatus effectively immediately. That’s now looking closer to a 60-day postponement with play resuming in mid-June after a recommendation from the CDC on Sunday night that suggested that there should be no events with 50 or more people for the next eight weeks.
CDC recommendation of no events of 50-plus people for next two months comes as a number of NBA owners and executives increasingly believe a best case scenario is a mid-to-late June return to play — with no fans. League's scouting for possible arena dates all the way thru August.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) March 15, 2020
That’s if the season isn’t canceled entirely.
“I want to get back on the court, of course, for many reasons,” Gallinari said. “But right now this is not a simple and easy situation to solve. This is bigger than basketball, bigger than anything. It’s a worldwide problem. So I do want to play basketball, but at the same time I want to know everybody is safe.”
The coronavirus and the subsequent stoppage of play put a halt to what has been a tremendous season for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Prior to games being postponed, OKC had won three-in-a-row, sitting in fifth in the Western Conference.