The NBA family suffered a loss Tuesday when Noordin Said, a security official for NBA players and musical entertainers like Beyonce, passed away at the age of 56 after contracting the coronavirus (COVID-19), Said's daughter told Yahoo! Sports' Chris Haynes.
Said worked for a number of NBA players including Warriors forward Draymond Green during the 2018 NBA playoffs, and former Golden State big man DeMarcus Cousins on several occasions.
Said's daughter, Samantha, told Haynes that her grandmother also contracted the virus and passed away roughly seven hours before her father.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Bay Area and California sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
“I was heartbroken,” Cousins told Yahoo Sports after hearing of Said's passing. “It sucks, especially losing a guy like him. He’s an A-1, first-class-type dude. Anybody he’s ever come in contact with, all you heard was good reviews. He’s just a good, genuine dude. He took his job seriously, did it with class, did it with the best of his abilities, super professional, and the family man in him would give you advice on the daily. He was an OG at the same time. This hurts. It was a bad situation. There wasn’t much you could do. All you could do was sit from afar and hope and pray for the best. And that’s what we did.”
Samantha told Haynes that her father and grandmother went to the hospital initially but were sent home to quarantine because their symptoms were not bad enough. Noordin Said tried to get a coronavirus test when the NBA season was suspended but was turned down.
On March 30, Noordin Said felt he was having a heart attack and went to the ER despite the EMTs advising against it. Said was placed on a ventilator and started to show signs of improvement on April 1. But his condition worsened on April 4 and the family had a hard time getting ahold of the doctors and nurses to find out how Noordin was doing.
“Once my father [was too weak] and couldn’t call us anymore, it was hard to get in touch with him,” Samantha Said told Yahoo Sports. “My brother -- Noordin Jr. -- was the one who was making the phone calls. … I understand they were understaffed, but when you have a family member in ICU by themselves and you can’t go see them on a ventilator, that s--t is terrifying. My brother was calling and nobody answered. They would tell us to stop calling, but they wouldn’t give us updates. … We always never had the accurate information.”
Golden State Warriors
On April 6, Noordin Jr. got through to the hospital and they told the family they needed to come to say goodbye.
The family was allowed to go in one-by-one to say goodbye. Noordin Said passed away early Tuesday morning.
Green, Cousins, Kevin Durant and Rajon Rondo, who Said worked for this season, all reached out to offer their condolences to the family.
“This virus is real,” Samantha told Yahoo Sports. “People are dying out there. If you have asthma or breathing problems, you need to really take this even more seriously. Everyone needs to stay inside and social-distance themselves. This s--t is real. It’s crazy. My dad was fighting for a week and then he had to go to the hospital and then the virus took over his lungs. Everyone needs to stop thinking this is all fun and games. If you need to go outside, go for essential needs. This virus is taking over.”
[RELATED: Steph FaceTimes brave nurses helping treat coronavirus patients]
Noordin Said is survived by his children Samantha, Noordin Jr. Mija and Gabriela.
As of April 9, there were more than 400,000 cases of coronavirus in the United States and more than 14,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and NBC News reporting.