How a year of the pandemic brought out the best in Mizzou Tigers coach Cuonzo Martin

On the day the music stopped and the seemingly sacrosanct rhythms of sports in America were disrupted as never before, Cuonzo Martin was in a Nashville hotel room looking toward his University of Missouri basketball team’s scheduled Southeastern Conference Tournament game with Texas A&M.

He was speaking with Mike Kelly, the voice of Mizzou sports, when word came that the game was canceled last March 12 — the first full day of a whirlwind shutdown of pro and college sports precipitated by the NBA suspending its season the night before after Utah’s Rudy Gobert tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus.

“This is real-life stuff,” Martin said when I called him a few days later. “And it’s moving every second.”

Bewildering and frustrating to many as the abrupt turn was, unfathomable as the broader ripples might have been then, it was soon clear how dire the situation was … and how crucial it was that sports assumed an influential role amid a broader leadership vacuum.

Even so, in the year since the anniversary impending next week, there have been nearly 30 million cases and more than 500,000 deaths. Endless economic chaos has left countless people in desperation and anguish in our country alone.

Amid all that, we’ve perhaps never had a more broadly clarifying sense of mortality or more literal demonstration of how entwined our fates are. Or at least the chance to consider all that, starting with the pause itself and extending to the ramifications ever since and as we see who stands tallest among us.

That includes the truest measure of Martin as a coach even as he has his team on trajectory to the NCAA Tournament and perhaps his most promising postseason at MU.

A season that has featured Martin’s 250th career win as Mizzou (14-7) enters its game at Florida (13-6) on Wednesday has been his finest for reasons that extend well beyond wherever the team ends up.

“Well, you know, I’ve always had it on my heart to try to do the right things. But I think oftentimes … when you work under the university’s umbrella, you have to respect the space that you’re in,” he said during a Zoom call with the media on Tuesday.

Just the same …

“At what point (do) you stand up and understand your impact and your role in society?” he said. “And it’s not to create hate. But it’s to create a voice.”As he’s done more than ever in recent months, he tried to deputize that responsibility onto others with voice and outlets: the media and, by implication, anyone willing to listen.

“Even if you don’t look like me, you’re still a part of it,” he said. “You’re part of society. You’re part of the walk. You have a voice. You have a pen. You have a paper. You can write, you can do the same thing.”

As Martin tried a year ago to take measure of all the unknowables and flux ahead, he leaned on his Christian faith. As a man who believes in God, he asked, “help me to see what I need to see.”

In the months to come, and amplified by the chilling murder of George Floyd last May, a clear vision emerged.

With “time stopped” because of the pandemic, Martin said last summer, the Floyd murder reverberated in ways that it might not have otherwise. He meant that both more generally but acutely when it came to himself. Working towards racial equality, he said during a Kansas City Star forum on race and sports last summer, is what must drive him most.

“From this point on,” he said then, “this is who I am.”

Since I first wrote about him when he was in high school back in East St. Louis and a few years later as he was contending with cancer, Martin has always understood the game is as much a vehicle as a crucible.

He’s always sincerely prioritized the opportunities that come with education, always stressed the possibilities of helping the community, always talked to his players about doing “the right things in the midnight hour, because what’s in the dark will come to light.”

But he’s also experienced a further awakening in this last year that has refined and revitalized his purpose.

So in May he issued a statement about Floyd, saying that his voice won’t be silent until the injustice stops and asking all “to join in our pain to mourn, to stand united against oppression and ACT to create change. We must live and lead with compassion for one another. Now, more than ever before, it’s important to love each other, to listen to each other and grow together.”

And, among other MU coaches, he worked to get his players registered to vote. This season, he sought out opportunities to educate them about parts of American history that aren’t necessarily in the text books.

Such as what they learned an hour away from their game at Auburn in Montgomery, Alabama, at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

The experiences calling attention to Black lynching victims, slavery and other elements of segregation and racism were piercing, evoking tears in senior Jeremiah Tilmon and leaving Martin and others agonized.

So here we are, nearly a full year since the pandemic convulsed us … and also in certain ways measured those privileged to be in a position to apply perspective to the wretched circumstances.

Some shrunk from it or shirked their duty, or at least their opportunity. Many others heard a call and helped us see what we needed to see, with Martin as much a beacon as anyone.

He knows sports are vital in so many ways, from the possibilities that they can create for so many to meaningful diversion to a vast economic force. But he also knows all the more something he said a year ago:

“The sport is what it is; it’s entertainment,” he said. “This is real right now.”

And, he knows, ever since.

Even as he was speaking specifically of matters of race Tuesday, he made a simple but thought-provoking appeal with a more universal application. If you are thriving and neglect your neighbor, he said, “then who are you?”

Something we might all ask ourselves as we keep contending with this altered reality and the chance at an awakening that has come with it.