Five years after the NBA — and the world — stopped, Sixers reflect on COVID shutdown: ‘It was a crazy time’

The headliner band took the stage in front of a large crowd at a Nick Nurse Foundation dinner on March 11, 2020, but did not finish its set.

News had just begun to circulate that the NBA had suspended its season because of the COVID-19 pandemic. What made many attendees even more wary: The Raptors, then the team Nurse coached, had played the Utah Jazz just two days earlier, and then-Utah center Rudy Gobert had become the first confirmed COVID case in the league.

“[The band] played about four or five songs,” Nurse recently recalled, “and then we all went straight to the hospital” to get tested.

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It has been five years since that flashpoint moment, which, to sports followers across the spectrum, signaled the seriousness of the global health crisis that would kill millions and bring society to a halt. Seemingly everybody has a personal, visceral story about where they were and how they spent the ensuing days, weeks, and months defined by uncertainty, isolation, and even fear.

“It was a crazy time,” said Sixers big man Guerschon Yabusele, who was playing in the China Basketball Association when the pandemic originated in that country. “And we were all part of this.”

Here is a snapshot of what a collection of Sixers remember about the day the league stopped, and everything that followed.

Guerschon Yabusele’s eyes widened when approached recently about this topic inside the team’s locker room.

“I was really at the source, I would say,” he told The Inquirer.

The source, as in China. After he was released by the Boston Celtics during the 2019 summer league, Yabusele signed with the CBA’s Nanjing Monkey Kings. COVID cases began publicly surfacing as Yabusele approached his 2020 All-Star break, during which he and his pregnant wife had a vacation planned to Thailand.

They felt a little nervous getting on an airplane, where they noticed seemingly every cough from fellow passengers. When they arrived at their hotel, they were advised to stay on the grounds rather than venture out. Monkey Kings reps called Yabusele daily with updates on skyrocketing cases, eventually suggesting that they go to their home country of France after their vacation rather than return to China.

When the Yabuseles put on masks upon arriving in Paris, people looked at them “like we’re crazy,” he recalled.

“Yo, something’s coming,” they responded. “We were there, and it’s scary.”

Yabusele signed with ASVEL, a Euroleague club just outside of Lyon, in late February, but played in only five games before the French team also suspended its season. When Yabusele learned that the NBA had done the same, he realized “now this is serious” worldwide.

“I was like, ‘What is going on?’” Yabusele said. “Not knowing when it was going to stop. Not knowing when you’re going to be able to go outside. … I’m looking outside of my building and there’s nobody in the street. I’m like, ‘This is the end times.’”

Andre Drummond had already undergone a massive career and life shift at the start of 2020. After spending his first seven-plus NBA seasons with the Detroit Pistons — and becoming a two-time All-Star — he was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers at the February deadline.

So when the league shut down about a month into adjusting to his new surroundings, the center initially thought, “Damn, what am I going to do with myself?”

He hopped onto a plane to Miami, where he and his best friend planned to stay at a local luxury hotel. While they were getting drinks, though, the bartender abruptly declared that she could no longer serve them.

“I’m like, ‘I’ve only had one drink. You’re cutting me off already?’” Drummond recalled. “She’s like, ‘No, did you not see?’ They put the news up there [on the TVs] … and everything is closed, starting now.”

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Drummond moved from the hotel to a condo rental, where he said he had “never seen streets so deserted in my entire life. … The water’s even still.” Neighbors eventually began having “balcony parties,” bringing speakers outside to blare music, dance, and safely create some semblance of community.

“We’re across the way, like, waving at total strangers,” he said. “We made the best of it. It was a wild time.”

Also strange for Drummond? When the NBA began the 2020-21 season without fans in the arena and implemented daily testing and heavy restrictions while traveling for road games. Also, he changed teams midway through that season, joining the Los Angeles Lakers off the buyout market.

That created challenges for Drummond and his family, because nobody wanted to get on a commercial flight. Yet he also believes the rigid circumstances created “the best basketball, I think, we’ve played in a long time” as a league.

“There were no extracurricular [activities],” Drummond said. “So I think the level of focus was at a much higher level. … [I would tell people], ‘FaceTime me. I have to go to work.’”

How much can change in five years? Rookie Justin Edwards and second-year player Ricky Council IV were both in high school when COVID hit. Edwards was a freshman at Imhotep Charter here, while Council was a senior at Southern Durham in North Carolina.

So neither player had a personal attachment to the NBA yet. COVID, though, did prematurely end Edwards’ first state tournament run, and Council missed out on end-of-high-school rites of passage like a graduation ceremony.

Edwards joked that the toughest part of each day during that period was staying awake and focused during online school. Council, meanwhile, said he did not grow up with technology, such as a computer or cell phone. So when classes went virtual, he said, “there was really nothing I could do. They had to accept that.”

“I ain’t gonna lie,” Council added when asked how he completed those final high school courses, “I don’t remember doing anything after they sent us home.”

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Instead, Council and Edwards focused on basketball. Edwards, who would eventually become a McDonald’s All-American and top-rated recruit, was allowed in Imhotep’s gym for two or three workouts per day. Council went through drills outside because he was “so ready to get to college. I could not wait.”

Edwards, though, still had three high school seasons to play. He remembers a shortened slate as a sophomore, even wearing masks while playing for a period of time.

“After the game, everybody is just waving, because we can’t dap each other up,” Edwards said. “It was a weird experience.”

During the months-long quarantine period, Nick Nurse spent lots of time “working really hard” at playing the piano, one of his non-basketball interests. He also remembers countless Zoom meetings within the Raptors organization.

Disappointment lingered that the Raptors’ season had been interrupted just as they started to roll. They were in the midst of a 21-4 stretch dating to mid-January, including a four-game winning streak on a Western Conference road trip capped by that visit to Utah.

When the Raptors reconvened to prepare to play inside the restart bubble in Florida, they traveled early for on-site workouts. Because of social-distancing and cleaning requirements, only one player could be on the court with a staffer at a time. The floor was occupied from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m.

“It was so bizarre,” Nurse said. “Literally, our coaches were spending 12 hours a day at the gym, one at a time, to get through everybody.”

Basketball, and normal life, was about to return. But Nurse — and many others connected to the NBA or who follow sports — will never forget where they were when the league stopped on March 11, 2020.