Danilo Gallinari has a pretty unique perspective. Along with the Utah Jazz, back on March 11, the Oklahoma City Thunder became the NBA’s “Team 0” with respect to the novel coronavirus.
By that time, Gallinari had already been made aware of the devastation caused by COVID-19, as he had friends and family back in his home country of Italy who had already been personally impacted.
As a result, the 10-year NBA veteran became a figure of authority for his teammates, particularly during the uneasy hours when the players were quarantined in their locker room after the game against the Jazz had been suspended. Gallinari wrote about the entire experience in an inspiring essay for The Players’ Tribune.
Since then, he has continued to attempt to inspire and unify others on his social media channels, and the latest example of that came on Thursday morning.
Gallinari shared some art that Thunder fans have created and shared with him on his social media channels and, if nothing else, continues to attempt to keep the spirit of the community thinking about basketball.
“Keep drawing during this quarantine, I’m waiting for your new creations!” he tweeted.
Speaking of inspiring, the tweet from Gallo comes in the aftermath of Dr. Anthony Fauci — the country’s top infectious diseases expert — opined that sports could resume play in September without fans. He delivered the opinion in a Q&A session on Snapchat and, according to an ESPN report, was quoted as saying the following are the circumstances under which professional sports could resume:
“Nobody comes to the stadium. Put [the players] in big hotels, wherever you want to play, keep them very well surveilled. … Have them tested every single week and make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family, and just let them play the season out.”
Without question, that’s good news for all of us, Danilo Gallinari included.
