March 12, 2020

The Sixers never should've played that game last night — but it's too late now

By Kyle Neubeck
PhillyVoice Staff

To justify playing Wednesday's game against the Detroit Pistons, the Sixers trotted out a line a day in advance that has aged like milk, staring down a recommendation from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and effectively saying, "Thanks, but no thanks."

"We are aware of the recommendation offered today by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health," a Sixers team official told PhillyVoice on Tuesday evening, following a recommendation not to attend events with more than 5,000 people, "which included no mandates to postpone or cancel events, so there are no changes to our game schedule at this time. We will continue to monitor the situation, in coordination with the NBA and Wells Fargo Center."

When the Sixers canceled Monday's Youth Foundation Gala, team officials insisted they had been in constant contact with both the NBA and Wells Fargo Center, and a Sixers spokesman even went so far as to praise the efforts/preparation of the Wells Fargo Center. The arena offered their own statement over the weekend about continuing to hold games at the arena.

"We are monitoring the situation closely in coordination with the CDC, local public health officials, our league partners and live event promoters," the arena said over the weekend. "The safety and well-being of our guests, athletes, staff and partners is paramount and we have strengthened our rigorous sanitation processes and procedures throughout the arena. We will continue to collaborate with our medical and safety teams and act accordingly as this situation develops.”

Let me illustrate to you how unprepared to deal with this we all are as a collective, with a story of my own from Wednesday night's Sixers game against the Pistons.

I sit on the far left side of one of the closest rows to the court in the media section, behind the row of scouts and lined up with the team's regular reporters, typically between Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Jack McCaffery of the Delco Times. After going through the usual pregame routines and interviewing Ben Simmons about his troublesome back, I cut through traffic in the arena tunnels to make my way to my seat — only to find a person already sitting there who I had never seen before.

Unfamiliar faces show up to cover the team all the time, so as he moved out of my seat and into another next to the Sixers' stats department, I paid him little mind. But after Pompey moved back to the media room to work away from the noise of the crowd, our mystery man took the seat right next to me and proceded to sneeze twice in succession in the opening minutes of the game, all while quietly cheering for the home team.

This prompted a quick text to a member of the team's PR, seated nearby.

"Yo, who is this dude sitting next to me sneezing and shit in Keith’s seat?"

After several glares and texts sent out to see if he was supposed to be here, the problem was identified: this was indeed just some random dude, a fan or bystander of some sort, who had taken it upon himself to plop down in the media seats as if he was meant to be there. After a stern talking to from PR, he got up and left without any further attention I'm aware of. No security escort, no following party to deal with any issues of potential contamination, just a man with his AirPods in, aimlessly wandering through a crowd.

There is no way for me to know if that guy is a potential coronavirus carrier, or if this is just a potential funny moment for me to look back on when this mess is all said and done. A kind Sixers staffer, to her credit, even offered me a bit of Purell after the man left. But even in a setting where everyone is supposed to be on high alert, a simple fact remains — it is hard to control an environment of 15,000-plus people. You can put out all the hand sanitizer and put up all of the roped-off barriers and release all the statements to the press that you want. End of the day, it is still a high-traffic, close-quarters event where not everyone (your fans in the stands included) is acting in good faith or with the best interests of the people around them in mind.

In the time following that moment, I was in close-quarters contact with dozens of reporters, Sixers staffers, team PR people, old fans, young fans, the head coach, the general manager, an absolutely preposterous amount of people who would then go on to interact with other people in their own lives.

Flipping the equation the other way, the team the Sixers played, the Detroit Pistons, had just played Utah's Rudy Gobert on Saturday night. Detroit's players were then in contact with the Sixers on Wednesday night, and in turn, that limited group of people still allowed in the locker room — PR staffers, coaches, and the like — were in close quarters with reporters, who were in close quarters with fans, who went on to return home to their families and friends and colleagues, with no way of knowing yet if they will have to self-quarantine in the days and weeks to come.

You'll probably have to continue waiting on an answer to that question. Though the Pistons released a statement claiming there was "no indication" the coronavirus has been passed to any Pistons player or staff member, PhillyVoice made multiple attempts to contact the Sixers over the last 13 hours about whether their players had been instructed to self-quarantine, whether anyone was believed to be at risk, and whether the non-Sixers employees in the arena on Wednesday should take precautionary steps. None of those texts or calls were returned as of this writing.

Are the Sixers at fault for a reporter showing up to do his job in spite of the public health warnings, or for fans showing up to the arena against the suggestion of people who know better? Not especially.

But it reinforces something that should have been clear before every league began canceling their seasons. Big business' top interest is not your health and safety. Joshua Harris' absence from Wednesday's game, which forced Elton Brand and Brett Brown to answer for decisions he and his fellow owners were responsible for, tells you all you need to know about that. The Wells Fargo Center, when asked earlier this week whether they would take care of workers in the arena impacted by potential cancellations or closed-door games, referred PhillyVoice to the statement you see up top.

In other words, take care of yourselves, be safe, and look out for one another as you can. It's not clear if anyone else is going to.