O'Donnell: Contagion prevents old Prospect champs from seeing Zion
ON A FRIDAY NIGHT long ago, the host Prospect Knights won a magical basketball game.
They beat a Hersey varsity loaded with junior Andy Pancratz and freshman Dave Corzine for the first Mid-Suburban League crossover title, 84-81.
So it was perfectly normal that the four surviving starters - Casey Rush, Rick Robertshaw, Dave Lundstedt and Jeff Bzdelik - made plans for a reunion at a game involving Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans.
A key factor was that the brilliant Bzdelik remains in the game as the associate head coach/defense for Alvin Gentry and the Pelicans.
The date chosen was last Wednesday night at Sacramento's Golden 1 Center.
Despite the COVID-19 scare, Lundstedt flew in from Connecticut, dropping off new golf equipment at his winter home near Phoenix en route.
Robertshaw and wife Bev Busse-Robertshaw braved airports and enclosed cabin spaces to jet from Las Vegas through San Francisco to Sacramento.
Rush, a retired coach and educator, motored down from the Bay Area.
Bzdelik had arranged seating for wife Nina along with his old blue Knights.
"We got there about an hour before the game," Lundstedt said.
"Rick and I walked around the arena. Casey sat with Nina. That was when the news about Rudy Gobert came over my phone."
The news was the snowball that would begin the sports avalanche.
Gobert had tested positive for the coronavirus. Rumors immediately began that the NBA might suspend play Thursday.
"We all kind of joked that we were going to see the last NBA game played before some kind of weird hiatus," Robertshaw said.
But as the pregame ticked below 10:00, Rush kept noting:
"The Kings were on the floor. The Pelicans weren't. Something was up."
He was correct. Backstage, the New Orleans players had voted not to play.
As the sellout crowd was informed, Bzdelik trudged into the stands to personally deliver the news.
"I thought it kind of blew because I don't watch the NBA," said Robertshaw, who also had a long career in education and coaching.
"I was there because of the camaraderie and the chance to get to see young Zion live.
"And now that wasn't going to happen."
So, the group exited. The Bzdeliks flew back to New Orleans. Lundstedt returned to Phoenix through Burbank. The Robertshaws retraced their SAC-SFO-LAS routing.
The next day, the media-tagion overwhelmed sports in America.
Now, the old mates are resolutely among the silently perplexed over the astounding disruptions to life in these United States.
"I can understand reasonable precautions," said Lundstedt, an All-Big Ten shortstop at Illinois who retired as CEO of Honeywell's Consumer Products Group in 2007.
"But there has to be a point where common sense, probabilities and decisions to live your life with due respect to all come into play."
Robertshaw and Rush were asked a more specific question:
If you were 20 years old and on a team now denied the chance to play in the NCAA men's tournament, what would your reaction be?
"I'd be devastated," said Robertshaw, a mathematician.
"I hope I would be advised in advance. I'd ask for a few hours to do research and prepare an informed response to show that I would rather take the risk of catching the contagion and deal with it after being able to take a shot at the dream of my basketball life."
Rush was even more direct:
"I'd let everyone know that at the scheduled time of the first-round game, I will be in uniform at center court, bouncing a basketball and ready to play."
STREET-BEATIN': Since the Masters and MLB's Opening Day are now on hold, lone major rite of the American sports spring still set to go is The Kentucky Derby. And one with channel to Churchill Downs Inc. boss Bill Carstanjen says no Derby could mean there will never be live racing at Arlington Park again. ...
With Charles Barkley in self-quarantine, Kenny Smith did a tremendous job pulling double duty between TNT and The NBA Network. (He is cast as the voice of reason and he was.) ...
Dan Roan reports that there likely will be minor trims in times allotted to sports on WGN-Channel 9 news programming. Management has yet to announce what the interim futures of "The Sunday Instant Replay" and nightly new "GN Sports" will be. ...
Thursday at 11:30 a.m., Dave Leitao and the DePaul Blue Demons were at a Manhattan hotel awaiting a Big East quarterfinal vs. Villanova. Six hours later, through remarkable expediency by A.D. Jeannie Ponsetto, they were deplaning at O'Hare. ...
And with fear and uncertainty once again commanding so much of the American spirit, is there a better time to recall the Biblical excerpt that President John F. Kennedy was to have concluded his midday address with at The Dallas Trade Mart on Nov. 22, 1963: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.