Oracle Arena (pictured above) was the home of the Golden State Warriors until they moved to the Chase Center starting this season. As of March 11, the Warriors will play in front of empty seats (Courtesy of Creative Commons).
The past few weeks have been tumultuous ones for fans in the sports world, as events are being cancelled and bans are being levied on games that restrict attendance. The spread of the new infectious disease COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, has become an unprecedented situation that a lot of people don’t know how to deal with. With updates coming daily from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, some teams and organizations have taken dramatic measures to mitigate the spread of the disease.
On Wednesday March 11 at around 2:30 p.m., the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association announced that their home game against the Brooklyn Nets will be played in an empty arena. They are the first professional sports team in the United States to make this decision, but they made it with fans and players in mind. According to CNBC, the Warriors made the call to host a game without fans due to San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s ban of public gatherings of 1,000 or more people in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Just hours later, around 4:30 p.m., the NCAA made the unexpected decision to ban fans from attending the March Madness Tournament that is set to take place later this month. March Madness is one of the most exciting times of year, with buzzer-beaters and absurd upsets giving basketball fans everywhere something to watch for almost three weeks straight. Yes, we will still be able to fill out brackets and complain when they get busted in the first round. Yes, we will still be able to watch the games on TV. But one major thing will be missing: the sound of the fans.
As fans, we know what it’s like to be watching the games as they unfold and experiencing them with others around us. For people watching at home, you can hear the sound of the crowd—and sometimes the commentators note the level of noise. However, it is hard to comprehend how these momentous decisions will affect the players. They still have to suit up and play a competitive basketball from start to finish, but now they will have to do so without thousands of screaming fans setting the atmosphere for them to psych themselves up.
Following a memorandum distributed by the NBA on March 6 directing teams and players to prepare to play games without fans, Los Angeles Lakers superstar Lebron James made a statement expressing his disappointment a day later. “We play games without the fans? Nah, that’s impossible,” James said. “I ain’t playing if I ain’t got the fans in the crowd. That’s who I play for. I play for my teammates, and I play for the fans.” James echoed the feelings of many other players, but with the announcement that came on March 11, he changed his tune.
“Obviously, I would be very disappointed not having the fans, because that is what I play for—I play for my family, I play for my fans,” James said. “If they feel like it's best for the safety of the players, the safety of the franchise, the safety of the league to mandate that, then we all listen to it.”
With the reality of the situation setting in, NBA players must come to terms with the fact that they very well could be vying for a championship with no one cheering them on. As the COVID-19 crisis develops rapidly every day, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other professional sports leagues such as the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball making very similar decisions.