Ben Rothenberg of the New York Times joined Off The Ball to discuss how Novak Djokovic's positive COVID-19 test will affect Djokovic and the sport of tennis.
The test rounds off a problematic few weeks for Djokovic, after hosting the Adria Tour, which was called off on Sunday due to a positive test for Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov.
"The sad thing is that this is completely expected in a lot of ways; as soon as the images emerged from the Adria Tour, we were all taken aback by how 'un-pandemicky' this looked," Rothenburg said.
"It looked like a completely different universe from the one of social distancing and caution that we've all grown used to."
Prayers up to all the players that have contracted Covid - 19. Don’t @ me for anything I’ve done that has been ‘irresponsible’ or classified as ‘stupidity’ - this takes the cake. https://t.co/lVligELgID
— Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) June 23, 2020
Dangerous Djokovic?
After being heavily involved in the Adria Tour, the Serb has now taken responsibility for an event that looks deeply misguided. So what next for Djokovic's career?
"I think that Djokovic's health opinions and views are probably a part of this; he has been skeptical about a vaccine.
"He has brought all kinds of weird pseudoscience people on his channels, bringing on all kinds of strange gurus to talk about changing water with positive thinking and things like that.
"The skepticism of science did him no favours here."
Alternative views are one thing, but has Djokovic crossed the line into dangerous views?
"I think he has, he acknowledged that in his post today - we will see if this leads to a larger awakening.
"He has apologised for the harm that the Adria Tour did, which it did, it made people sick who may not have otherwise become sick. That is very frustrating and disappointing.
"When he talks about veganism and meditation, that is completely fine and is his prerogative to do. When he starts preaching more things that could be misleading and dangerous to people [...] is not a positive thing to be doing with his platform."
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