On this day in Boston Celtics history, the NBA ground to a halt in 2020 as the world came to terms with a growing pandemic. The league canceled games following a positive COVID-19 test by Utah Jazz big man Rudy Gobert.
The Celtics were in Wisconsin to play the Milwaukee Bucks and ended up stranded in Milwaukee while the team was quarantined briefly. They had played the Jazz not long before Gobert’s positive test.
That test set in motion the longest midseason shutdown in league history, throwing the NBA calendar into a disarray that only recently returned to normal. It resulted in the season being finished in a bubble environment at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex.
To say it changed the league and its trajectory would be an immense understatement, and it continues reshaping the world we live in, to say nothing of the NBA.