Utah Jazz player Joe Ingles said he would end his career if it means keeping his son, who has an autoimmune disorder, safe from the coronavirus.
Ingles, 32, is a shooting guard who plays alongside Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, the first two NBA players to test positive for the virus. Ingles tested negative.
The NBA suspended the 2019-2020 season two weeks ago after Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus.
Ingles is self-quarantining with his wife and 3-year-old twins at their Salt Lake City home. He recently revealed he would be willing to end his career if it meant protecting his son Jacob, who has autism and a diminished immune system, making him more at risk to the COVID-19 virus.
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“If you had to tell me that you could never play again to protect Jacob from this, I would walk away, fly to Australia and never play another game in my life and be very content with it,” Ingles told the Athletic. “I could walk out of this gym now, in the clothes I’m in, and go to the airport. I would have zero issues (with that choice) because I wouldn’t want to put my family through that. I don’t want to put Jacob through that. I don’t want to put his sister [Milla] through that, and I definitely don’t want to put his mother through that. So it’s really hard.”
“I would love to go back and play,” he added. “There’s a million reasons why I want to play. But the one reason — I love Jacob — to not play is the one that I would stick by.”
More than 491,000 people have been diagnosed with the virus, which has led to more than 22,000 deaths as of Thursday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 118,000 people have recovered after contracting the virus.
