Sunday Musings: The show must go on

“The show must go on.” -Tyrese Haliburton

These five words were part of a much longer statement from the Kings’ 21-year-old shooting guard Friday night following the team’s loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. The second-year guard is learning that the league is a business and canceling games is bad for the brand.

"Obviously I'm frustrated by it, a lot of players are,” Haliburton said. “It's a player's safety thing to me. I can't eat anything in the locker room, I've got to eat in the hallway because I can't risk getting covid, but I can go out on the court and breath in dudes' faces, but when I come in the locker room I've got to space out. It's frustrating. I understand that we've got to play and it makes sense, the show must go on." 

Down six players, interim head coach Alvin Gentry, assistant Mike Longabardi and countless staff members, the Kings were forced to play while struggling with a complete covid-19 outbreak. Maybe more confusing, the Grizzlies were forced to play against a team that was struggling with a complete covid-19 outbreak.

Why not postpone the game? The Kings understood that they were likely taking a loss, but why risk another team losing half of it’s players to health and safety protocols in the coming days. 

And it’s not just the Grizzlies that are at risk. Just because they haven’t turned up a bunch of positive tests yet doesn’t mean that they won’t in the coming days. That’s how covid-19 works. 

Memphis plays Sunday at home against the Portland Trail Blazers and Monday against the Oklahoma City Thunder. What if the Kings are ground zero for outbreaks for three other teams? 

These are not hypothetical ramblings of a crazy media member. It’s the exact situation the Kings recently went through. 

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A little over a week ago the Kings visited a Charlotte Hornets team that was missing half of its roster due to health and safety protocols. The Kings then traveled to Cleveland to play the Cavs on the second night of a back-to-back and then followed that up with a stop in Toronto to play the Raptors.

Cleveland is currently dealing with a massive outbreak and their game against the Atlanta Hawks was canceled on Sunday. Toronto is dealing with a smaller outbreak, but still struggling.

We can’t be 100 percent sure that all of these events are tied together. There is a possibility that this is all just one giant coincidence, but the NBA has a problem and they aren’t doing enough to stem the tide.

The argument that some will make is that the league is filled with healthy young men. We haven’t seen a player suffer through what so many others have world wide. We haven’t seen a player die or spend a month on a ventilator, although we have seen players struggle after they return to play. 

Is the league tempting fate? What about the thousands of fans that enter these arenas to watch a game or the workers serving those customers? What is an acceptable number of losses?

We don’t need a worst case scenario to play out to learn a lesson. 

For better or worse, the NBA is the canary in the mine shaft. It is an advanced warning system and the alarm bells are sounding. 

If the players, most of whom are fully vaccinated, are catching the virus at this rate, what about the fans in the stands? What about the arena workers who are days away from Christmas?

I’m not advocating that everything shuts down and that life as we know it should be put back on hold. But something has to give.

More consideration needs to be given and it can’t just be that teams can sign additional players to 10-day contracts to fill out their rosters so they have enough to meet the league minimum of eight healthy bodies.

Maybe there isn’t an answer. Covid is our new reality and likely will be for years to come. That doesn’t excuse the league from doing more to protect its players, workers and fans.