Novel coronavirus took its toll on the Chicago Bulls and the NBA’s season as a whole, which is now being put on a hiatus.
For the remainder of what would’ve been the 2019-20 regular season, the NBA has put operations on hiatus. This means that the Chicago Bulls season will end for the time being with a win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on March 10.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that basketball will be done across the board for the rest of the year, but not much is known yet. But this is an immeasurable action to take in the midst of a ton of uncertainty around the sports world.
The NBA released a statement on the matter on the league’s official Twitter timeline on March 11. This is obviously huge news, that comes on a day when the precautions surrounding coronavirus were heightened all over the sports world.
NBA To Suspend Season Following Tonight's Games pic.twitter.com/2PTx2fkLlW
— NBA (@NBA) March 12, 2020
On this same day, the NCAA announced that the Big Dance would be played in front of a very limited audience. All of the conference tournaments around college basketball were mostly planning on playing in front of limited audiences too.
Four of the biggest active sports leagues in the United States also recently released a joint statement that they were planning on closing off locker rooms as a COVID-19 precaution.
However, COVID-19 is now reaching unprecedented levels as the NBA was forced to take huge action to put its season on hiatus. There was a little more than one month left in the NBA regular season as of March 11.
This precaution from the NBA seemingly came after a game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz was postponed due to fear and symptoms shown by Mike Conley and Rudy Gobert. It turned out that Gobert would test positive for novel coronavirus, which the NBA then took prompt action upon.
The last of the games on the March 11 slate will be played out, but that’s about it. The NBA said in its announcement on that it will re-evaluate its options once the players are cleared. For now, it’s a waiting game for fans and players alike.