For a man who’s seen just about everything in more than three decades as an NBA coach, what Alvin Gentry witnessed March 11 in Sacramento was something new altogether. Just minutes before his New Orleans Pelicans were scheduled to tip off against the Kings in a key Western Conference matchup, the game was postponed due to the threat of coronavirus.
“I’ve never experienced anything like it in 31 years in the NBA,” Gentry said on Wednesday’s Pelicans Podcast. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in that situation – you’re at the arena and ready to play, and the game is being suspended. So it was new. It was something new to everyone.”
That also obviously applies to the entire nation right now, as well as for basketball fans everywhere who’ve been without the NBA for the past three weeks. Since flying back to Louisiana in the wee hours of a Thursday morning from Northern California, Gentry and the Pelicans have been part of the local and national effort to practice social distancing and protect others from the threat of COVID-19.
“To be honest with you, it feels like three months,” Gentry said of the three-week hiatus. “There was just so much turmoil that night on what was going on. It seems like such a long, long time (ago). But I think all of the decisions that were made were the right decisions.”
Although it pales in comparison to greater concerns at the moment, one of the frustrating aspects of the season being halted for New Orleans (28-36) was that the Pelicans were heading into a vital stretch of schedule, with numerous key matchups imminent vs. Sacramento and Memphis. The eighth-place Grizzlies (32-33) are 3.5 games ahead of the Pelicans, but the two Southwest Division clubs were scheduled to face each other twice over a four-day span in late March. It would’ve been a chance for New Orleans to potentially slice further into its deficit. That the Pelicans were even still in the postseason hunt after starting 7-23, including a 13-game losing streak, showed how much of a turnaround New Orleans had produced.
“What’s really disappointing about it is that we were going to control our own destiny,” Gentry said of the circumstances. “The thing that was the most encouraging is that we had two head-to-head games with Memphis, three with San Antonio, two with Sacramento – all the teams we were chasing. We had won the series with Portland. We had gone through a stretch where we had the toughest schedule in the league. And then we had a schedule that we thought was very favorable for us down the stretch, and we weren’t able to play that.”
In the meantime, Gentry said he is constantly communicating with players as the Pelicans – like everyone else – wait to see what the next steps will be for the NBA and the country as a whole.
“We’ll find a way to get through this,” Gentry said of New Orleans. “Everyone knows how this community operates. They stick together and we become a team.”
