Last week, on a video conference with Warriors president and chief operating officer Rick Welts, Santa Cruz Warriors president Chris Murphy was interrupted when his 6-year-old son jumped into his lap.
“I’m not happy that I need to stay at home,” Connor Murphy announced to Welts and the rest of the organization’s COVID-19 task force. The kindergartener’s proclamation was met with laughs from those on the call.
After the NBA suspended play to help stop the spread of the coronavirus and California instituted a state-wide shelter-in-place order, Warriors’ employees like Welts and Murphy have been mandated to work from home over the past four weeks. For executives and coaches who normally keep unconventional hours and travel schedule, parenting in isolation has been an adjustment.
With classrooms closed throughout the Bay Area, parents have had to schedule workdays around feeding, cleaning up after and homeschooling their kids. Many Warriors executives and coaches have had to navigate unprecedented financial challenges and scouting for the NBA draft while also keeping their young children occupied.
The video conference about millions of dollars in lost ticket revenue must wait. It’s lunchtime, and a 6-year-old needs his cheese quesadilla.
“It’s been a new revelation,” Warriors assistant general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. said. “It feels like by the time you get them fed for breakfast and the dishes done, you have to turn around and prepare lunch, do the dishes again, then it’s dinner. It’s just like, ‘Man, these meals don’t stop coming.’”
Dunleavy and his wife have four children: two boys age 4 and 8, and two girls, a 9-year-old and 11-month-old. His oldest daughter has taken up sewing medical-style masks out of old T-shirts, while Dunleavy and his sons participate in an “NBA Finals” series every week in the driveway of their San Francisco home.
His sons choose a team to mimic — such as the 1980s Lakers, where one will be Magic Johnson and there other Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — and Dunleavy will choose another — say, Larry Bird’s Celtics. Miraculously, the series always goes seven games.
“I win plenty of games within the series, but they always prevail,” Dunleavy said. “I’m trying to keep the tears at a minimum.”
Meanwhile, Warriors assistant coach Aaron Miles has started filming weekly videos called “Miles Mondays” in which he teaches his sons different basketball skills by having them imitate a former Warriors player. Aaron coaches “The Miles boys” while his wife, Mikki, films from their San Mateo driveway. They are then sent to the Warriors and posted on their social media channels.
“It was just perfect, because it allows me to bridge my two greatest passions: family and fatherhood with basketball,” Miles said.
Y’all ready to learn the ‘UTEP two-step’? 🏀
Dubs development coach Aaron Miles is here to show you how to elevate your handle with Tim Hardaway’s signature dribbling move.
Miles Mondays || #DubNation pic.twitter.com/99YbyguP6J
— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) April 6, 2020
While teenagers can occupy themselves, elementary-school-aged kids demand constant attention and guidance through their schoolwork.
The Mileses have four boys from ages 6 to 11, and have them on a school-like schedule that ends around 3 p.m. each weekday. “We’ve turned into elementary school teachers,” Miles said.
Lesson plans and assignments sent by teachers take up part of the day, but that can only hold a younger kid’s attention so long.
“It’s chaos,” Murphy said in a phone interview from his Santa Cruz home. “I mean, I have a 6- and a 3-year-old, and I think it’s a matter of trying to balance working full-time and running a company with the need to not only keep them busy but to educate them.”
A fan of checklists at the office, Murphy put together a whiteboard with checkboxes for different school activities for his son to work through. Subjects range from math and science to “recess” — which consists of exercise and some time to play games on the family iPad.
“It keeps us focused and moving forward,” Murphy said.
However, there’s only so much of school that can be replicated at home, especially the carefully crafted lesson-plans and vital interactions between classmates that help teach kids social cues and values.
Murphy’s son was sad when he learned he wouldn’t experience kindergarten graduation and is concerned what will happen to the classroom’s baby chickens. Murphy tries to replace his son’s science education with nature walks through the park.
“I feel like I’m having a tremendous amount of guilt,” Murphy said. “If I’m not giving my kids a proper education, what does that mean when they go back to school in the fall?”
But before anyone can go back to school or the office, health officials will have to give an all-clear. As federal and local governments scramble to quell the deadly coronavirus that has already claimed more than 15,000 lives in the United States, no one knows when that will be. That ambiguity leads to kids asking unanswerable questions and to parents having to provide imperfect explanations.
“I would say my 6-year old definitely understands enough that you can talk about it,” Murphy said. “He’ll tell you ‘Because of the virus, I can’t go to the grocery store with Dad anymore.”
Dunleavy and his wife don’t shy away from having conversations about the pandemic in front of their children: “With our older ones, they’re like little adults within the conversation. At this point, there’s not a lot to hide.”
“It’s part of their upbringing,” Dunleavy said. “For us, what became 9/11, for them it’s probably going to be coronavirus. So they’ve taken it in stride, they get it, and they’re adjusting. We all really have no choice.”
Everyone has tried to remain optimistic. The silver lining, as they say, is that they have an opportunity to spend more time with their kids and appreciate their ability to adapt to new and challenging circumstances.
“You’re able to play a role in their education, you’re able to see how their thought process works and how they’re getting better every day,” Murphy said. “It’s definitely all great, you know? It’s just stressful.”
