LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – It’s been three weeks since I arrived at the Walt Disney World campus in preparation for the NBA restart. I was one of two members of the media who entered the bubble two weeks before the rest of the media contingent and one week before the teams arrived.
The league allowed two of its streaming partners early entry: Turner and ESPN.
I’m a full-time Yahoo Sports employee, but I’m also one of TNT’s secondary reporters. In late June, Turner asked me if I would be willing to go to the bubble early. I asked when, and the answer was in a few days.
Curse.
Suddenly, I’m making family arrangements and packing for a three-month period in a matter of two days. The plan was to get to quarantine early so they could be cleared to air the teams arriving on campus.
Gone until October.
I was quarantined for seven days: three days at the Wyndham Grand in Bonnet Creek and the last four days at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in the Casitas area. The Los Angeles Lakers, the Milwaukee Bucks, the Toronto Raptors, the Denver Nuggets, the Utah Jazz and the Boston Celtics would eventually arrive at the same resort, staying at the Grand Destination Tower.
The first three days were not as restrictive.
I was transferred to Disney’s Yacht Club Resort for daily tests of COVID-19 and then transported immediately. The test results were emailed within 12 hours. I have never been tested before. Waiting for those results was terrifying. I opened the email and prepared each time. It always gave me negative. The anxiety I experienced receiving that “Lab Results Available” email lasted for the first four to five days until I was told that if I tested positive, I would not receive an email, I would receive a visit from a doctor.
Then I knew that when I saw the email, it was fine.
The NBA will resume its season at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports complex at Disney. (Credit: mpi34 / MediaPunch / IPX)
There was no room service at the Wyndham due to the threat of contracting the coronavirus, so I was allowed to leave my room and visit one of the hotel’s two restaurants.
I could take my food to go or dine with adequate social distancing. The gym was open and the protocol only allowed four to five people at a time. After testing negative for three consecutive days, I was transferred to my permanent accommodation in Coronado Springs to finish the remainder of my seven-day quarantine.
It was then that things stiffened.
The only time I was allowed to leave my room was to be tested. No exercise, no fresh air, nothing. The test station is in the Grand Destination Tower. It’s about a five-minute walk. To do as much exercise as I could, I would run for the test and run again. But on the last day of quarantine, I realized that I was shortening the time I had to enjoy the outdoors. So I was sad on the last day.
The food delivered during the quarantine was not to my liking. If you like different forms of chicken, well this was for you. I’ll leave it at that. But all three meals were always delivered on time and provided me with large amounts of water and snacks.
This is where the guinea pig process started.
Here I am sharing the same hallways, restaurants, trails, jogging trails, gift shops, and testing center as the players and staff. I was repeatedly told before accepting the assignment that I should refrain from interacting or interacting with players and staff outside of the media access windows.
Those were the rules, so I followed them.
The problem is that the players know me and therefore they would naturally come up to each other and strike up a conversation. Awkwardly, I’m chatting with LeBron James, Donovan Mitchell, and others right in front of the NBA staff.
The league understands the relationship dynamics that some members of the media have with certain players, so the league did not maintain these interactions against me. The way I saw it was: If a player, coach or executive stopped me to speak, how am I wrong? Again, the league understood.
But over the course of the two weeks, restrictions came out of nowhere. Some areas we were allowed to frequent were abruptly off limits. The scenes that told us we could shoot were rejected. The goalposts kept moving and sometimes became frustrating, but to be fair, it was a test case and the league was learning the lay of the field and trying to implement the safest possible health and privacy measures on the go.
It was a great experience to see the comings and goings of the players throughout the complex, but it was not ideal for me.
The teams were told that the players and the media would be separate, and the access they had throughout the complex was in conflict with that agreement.
Also, it was a little awkward because they had to be my presence. Being in the same place with them, all the time, at all hours of the day, I didn’t want to go out like a journalist looking for my next story. Players need their space to operate freely without fear of being watched.
The other members of the media cleared the quarantine on Sunday, but the league will now have set limits. The access that I once had to walk freely through the complex has disappeared. Members of the media will now be confined to the residence space.
Testing will be conducted in hotel rooms or at a designated location in our area. The cafeteria and restaurants that I shared with the teams no longer exist. Our three meals will be available at a location to be determined.
In fact, to get to practices at the convention center, which is a minute’s walk from our hotel, we now have to take a shuttle service from the back of our facilities that will unload us all in front of the convention center . This is to keep us out of the way of the players and staff.
We have a mini gym and a pool.
It was quite an experience the last three weeks. To paraphrase Aladdin, we are going to see a whole new bubble.
It was fun while it lasted.
Related
