The past three months have been a whirlwind that has tested Chris Silva's faith, resilience and strength.
It has been a whirlwind that has kept the 23-year-old Heat rookie isolated in a Miami condo. A whirlwind that has kept him from playing the sport he loves. A whirlwind that has left him without the mentor he has leaned on almost daily for the past eight years.
The NBA season was suspended amid the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11 and team facilities across the league were closed to players and staff starting on March 20. Basketball has slowly returned to Silva's life, as the Heat began allowing players to participate in voluntary individual workouts at AmericanAirlines Arena on May 13 and the NBA recently approved a 22-team restart plan that has the season tentatively set to resume on July 31.
But Silva is still trying to accept the fact that he will need to move forward without Tommy Sacks, who suffered a heart attack and died on May 11 at age 60. Sacks was the associate head coach for the boys' basketball team at Roselle Catholic High in New Jersey, where Silva attended high school.
"He meant a lot," an emotional Silva said of Sacks, who was married with four children. "He was like a father figure to me."
When one of Sacks' sons, Tommy II, called to deliver the bad news shortly after Sacks' passing, Silva remembers the pain. He also remembers trying to gather himself for a virtual Heat team meeting an hour later. It wasn't easy.
"It was kind of hard to keep a straight face and just pay attention to the meeting after I received the bad news literally an hour before the meeting," Silva said. "It was just hard. ... I did everything I could to gather myself to hide my emotions that day."
The emotions were too real to hide.
