the utah jazz were squarely in the spotlight when the nba season was suspended march 11zion williamson and the new orleans pelicans were making a push to play on a bigger stagetheyll share the marquee when the season resumes thursday in the nba bubble near orlando flaback on march 11 when jazz center rudy gobert tested positive for covid19 the nba canceled his teams game in oklahoma city that nightobviously when you have the whole world judging you or threatening you or sending you a lot of negative energy and stuff like that its something that i would say is not easy as a human being gobert said two weeks ago of dealing with the coronavirusrelated fallout but at the same time people are just judging you on the perception they have and the perception you get from sometimes it can be one picture one video or one interview one action so people dont really know youdominoes began to fall as the league announced that the season would be suspended at the conclusion of the final game that night new orleans at sacramentobut new orleans was leery of playing after learning that a member of the officiating crew worked a jazz game a few nights earlier so the game against the kings was postponed and the nba went on hiatusnow 141 days later the jazz and the pelicans lead the way in the resumption of the seasonnew orleans and oklahoma city were the only teams to win all of their scrimmages and the jazz went 21the intensity level is going to be much much higher thursday pelicans coach alvin gentry said im confident that our guys will compete at a high level and be ready to playthe pelicans got good news tuesday night when rookie forward zion williamson returned to practice he left the bubble july 16 to tend to a family emergency and returned last fridayhe hasnt been cleared to play but the pelicans are hopeful he will be by tipoff of the opener of the eightgame seeding scheduleit really isnt a tough decision gentry said if hes ready to play hell play and if hes not we wont play him youre not going to risk anything long term for something very very short termgobert looked fully recovered in utahs scrimmages averaging 153 points and 70 rebounds a rift between gobert and leading scorer donovan mitchell who tested positive for covid19 shortly after gobert did seems to have healedim happy now that im in a good place and im happy that i get the joy back from playing basketball with my team and the competitiveness is back gobert said im ready to try to go out there and try to win the championship thats the goal to be honest after everything weve been through as a team and as human beings it would be a great comebackthe jazz will be without secondleading scorer bojan bogdanovic 202 who underwent seasonending wrist surgery in may sixth man joe ingles is