MIAMI _ I attended the last night of sports as we love them for a while.
I entered by the same dozens of AmericanAirlines Arena employees as any game. Only some were using hand sanitizers. I saw the same usher who often high-fives me in greeting. He stuck out his elbow to tap my elbow.
"New times," he said.
Odd times. Eerie times. Everywhere you went before Wednesday night's Miami Heat game, some version of the same question seemed to be asked: Should we be here?
The question was the answer. The NBA announced as much during the fourth quarter. It's closing the doors. Shutting the arenas. Canceling games until we're ready to enjoy them again. And that's the smart thing to do.
If you don't understand why during this coronavirus pandemic, you're precisely why a shutdown must happen. You need help staying safe. You also didn't see what happened Wednesday in Oklahoma City even as the Heat played a normal game before a normal crowd.
Utah center Rudy Gobert was ill during pre-game warmups in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma City medical staff examined him and talked to the referees, who postponed the game. The day before, Gobert made light of the new NBA media policy of staying six feet from reporters by playfully touching tape recorders and notebooks.
According to reports, he tested positive for the coronavirus. No one's laughing now. No one should be playing in these scary times. If the NBA decided this, it should have a domino effect across all the sports leagues.
The Inter Miami soccer home opener on Saturday? This franchise has waited six years for this day. It can wait another month, or six weeks, or whenever it's safe for everyone to return.
As it soon will be.
As we'll soon be ready for.
The Miami Open? The previous tennis tournament in Indian Wells, Calif., was canceled. There's no way the tennis world, as international a sports as any, will be ready to play in a couple of weeks.
This isn't some public panic. It's simple common sense by now. Having a full arena, with thousands of fans bumping into each other, coughing around each other, is exactly what health officials are saying to avoid right now.
Sports are frequently held up as a vehicle to teach lessons, and the lesson here is a simple one: Public safety is more important than cheering a two-handed dunk. Or backhand goal. Or walk-off home run. Or whatever your game is.
And public safety is the story here as America wades into the unknown of this virus. Well, that and lost money and public liability, which seemed to be a topic until common sense won out.
Wednesday was the day our sports world stopped. It began when the Ivy League canceled spring seasons earlier Wednesday. Penn's baseball team had just taken batting practice Wednesday at Florida Atlantic University when players were told their season was done.
Mayors in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., also said no big crowds would be allowed. The Ohio governor said the same, and the Columbus Blue Jackets became the first pro team to announce its games were closed to fans.
The NCAA then announced the men and women's tournament would be played before empty arenas. March Madness? No, March Smartness. The question now is if the games will go on at all.
None of this is perfect. But the perfect world left us a while ago.
"There are people a lot higher up than ourselves in this locker room, that have the knowledge to make those types of decisions," Heat forward Duncan Robinson said before Wednesday's game. "In terms of if that were to happen here, we love playing in front of our fans. We feel that gives us an advantage.
"But at the same time, the NBA has to do what it has to do to protect its players and the league. So whatever happens, we'll obviously deal with it and move forward."
There's navigating a season, everyone understands, and there's navigating a health issue.
"This is catching everybody's attention," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "I think we just all have to be very prudent right now, very observant as this was going, I was saying going day to day or even several days to several days to day to day to hour to hour."
The hour to shut it down is here. Sports will return soon in the manner we all know and love. Until then, close the doors, stop the games and keep everyone safe.
