Billy Donovan was there when Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 a year ago. The coach reflects on that night in Oklahoma City — and our naive approach to the pandemic.

One of Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan’s strongest memories from March 11, 2020, the night the NBA shutdown, centers on just how naive he was.

Then coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder, he was on the sidelines when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, stopping the game before it began and halting the sports world shortly thereafter.

“The game was postponed or canceled, so I just said to the guys, ‘Listen, we’ll get up and down tomorrow in practice. We’ll scrimmage,’” Donovan recalled last week. “I never saw those guys again until July 8.”

Chris Paul, head of the National Basketball Players Association, played for the Thunder, which gave Donovan more of a window than usual into the pulse of the NBA at the moment. But they still knew so little about the coronavirus.

It made the atmosphere in the lead up to the game already feel a bit strange and surrounded in uncertainty, Donovan remembered, because the league had just begun taking precautions related to COVID-19. Players were advised to limit their physical interactions with fans, sticking to fist bumps instead of handshakes, and the NBA limited locker room access to players and essential team personnel. But they still intended to play a normal game.

Right before tip-off, as players finished their final pregame stretches, Thunder team doctor and then-assistant general manager Rob Hennigan arrived at the court and huddled with the referees. Eventually Donovan remembers being brought over with Jazz coach Quin Snyder. Players stood around confused. It’s customary for fans in Oklahoma City to stand as a hype song by Zombie Nation plays throughout the arena until the first Thunder basket is made. The song started a second loop and fans were still standing, clapping along, ESPN reported.

The Jazz sent Gobert to get tested for COVID-19 and both coaches decided to bring their teams back to the locker room. Testing was not yet widely available, so the players were mostly subject to temperature checks, washing their hands and fewanswers.

“You just didn’t know what was going to happen,” Donovan said. “When we left it was crazy. We couldn’t even leave through the normal entrances and exits. We had to go through a roundabout way through the equipment area.

“We weren’t allowed to go down by Utah’s locker room. We were getting our temperatures taken. We were all kind of isolated in different areas of the building. It was really kind of a crazy time.”

The league would shut down later that evening as a result of Gobert’s positive test, which left Donovan working out of his home office in Oklahoma City for a few days, but he wouldn’t rejoin his team until they were getting ready to go to the bubble in Orlando, Fla.

“It’s hard to believe it’s been a year,” Donovan said. “The year has been a lot of twists and turns.”

Donovan has also gone through a major change in the past year, leaving the Thunder to coach the Bulls in September. Donovan said he was reflecting with Bulls vice president Arturas Karnsiovas recently about the past year, and how they’ve been unlike anything in league history.

The Bulls have had numerous run-ins with COVID-19 during the 2020-21 season, including several players who have contracted the virus — Garrett Temple, Chandler Hutchison, Tomas Satoransky — and others who have missed time for the league’s contact tracing efforts. In the first half, the Bulls had four games postponed by the NBA’s health and safety protocols for COVID-19, making their second half schedule jam-packed with back-to-backs and three games in four nights. The United Center is still not hosting fans and the Bulls have played in front of only a handful of crowds this season.

“Everything has really, really changed,” Donovan said. “It seems like with a year under our belt there’s more knowledge medically about the virus. We’re still trying to get everybody vaccinated and give everybody the opportunity to get vaccinated.

“The last year has been really crazy, and the NBA has done as good a job as you possibly could do just to get us back to playing. I mean the ability by the league to even have the bubble in Orlando and to be able to so quickly do it and keep everyone safe, and get through the season was remarkable… But it’s been basically two years in a row that seasons have been disrupted because of this. Hopefully sooner than later we can get back to some normalcy as it relates to the game.”