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For newly crowned NBA champion LeBron James, living and working in the same place for more than three months “played with his mind” and “played with his body.” Phoenix Suns coach Monty Williams marveled at an enviable statistic: zero coronavirus-related postponements during the league’s great sporting and social experiment.
Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, called it a win that required “extraordinary sacrifices on the part of everyone involved,” along with “a little luck, honestly, too.” Seven months after stopping play when the pandemic broke out in the United States, the NBA concluded its 2019-20 season in a restricted access quarantine zone at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, which became universally known as the bubble.
The league screened players daily for the virus. It imposed strict rules and occasionally handed out sanctions to ensure 113 pages of health and safety protocols were followed. Long bouts of isolation and the resulting mental and emotional strain led Rajon Rondo, James’ teammate, to consider this “by far” the toughest postseason of his 14-year career.
However, it also worked. The bubble lasted for 96 days, and when players across the league refused to play in a gesture of civil rights protest during the first round of the playoffs, league officials and team owners pledged to do more to support causes of social justice. The rebooted season, which began amid considerable skepticism, finally delivered a televised show with a Hollywood finale, as the Los Angeles Lakers, still reeling from the January death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, emerged with the title number. 17th NBA franchise. It was James’s room.
Now thorny discussions loom between league officials and the players’ union to address a number of unknowns about the upcoming season. The truth is that players have been promised eight weeks’ notice before they have to start over.
Silver has said that he does not expect the 2020-21 season to start before January. Michele Roberts, the union’s executive director, has said in several recent interviews that the delay may extend into February. While there is a strong desire on both sides to see teams play in their local markets, preferably with at least a small number of fans admitted to the games, it is unclear how soon it will be safe to do so. Sports that have avoided a bubble concept, like the NFL, move from one coronavirus crisis to the next.
The 2020 NBA draft is scheduled for November 18, and the league’s $ 180 million bubble allowed him to crown a champion for the 74th year in a row while also meeting some deals with television partners. However, much remains to be resolved.
The league and union must decide when to start free agency and how long they can wait to return to local markets before admitting that short-term regional bubbles may be necessary to play. Perhaps most importantly, they must set a new salary cap and luxury tax amid a $ 1.5 billion shortfall in projected 2019-20 revenue.
At least the sides are heading into this daunting offseason with the flowing urge to find a creative solution to stay operational. The efforts they made to do so were remarkable.
The NBA was the first major sports league in North America to suspend operations in March in response to the coronavirus outbreak. After a four-month hiatus, 22 of the league’s 30 teams were called up for the first time in league history. No one was allowed to leave campus once inside without league clearance and without undergoing additional quarantines upon re-entry, and fans were barred from all three playing venues.
Each day, the players, coaches, and team staff members were assessed and asked to record their temperatures and other symptoms. They are also governed by social distancing regulations during meals and leisure activities, and are urged to wear masks around other people outside of the basketball court. The formula gradually managed to silence criticism that the NBA was taking serious risks, primarily for financial reasons, by restarting a full-contact indoor team sport in the midst of a pandemic.
There was also a pushback on limitations from within: “I feel like when we entered the bubble, everyone was complaining about not wanting to be here,” Miami’s Bam Adebayo said, but players wanted to take advantage of the visibility of the NBA’s return to Support their social defense. In a period of great civil unrest in the country, Jaylen Brown of Boston, Donovan Mitchell of Utah, Malcolm Brogdon of Indiana, Adebayo and several of their peers campaigned loudly against racism and voter suppression. Many spoke daily about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other black people who had been killed by the police.
There were approximately 1,500 campus residents at the peak of the bubble. Although greater leniency was shown to players wearing masks than the detailed rules, the league managed to host 172 regular season and playoff games without a serious threat from coronavirus. The quality of the game, perhaps boosted by the elimination of air travel, also exceeded expectations despite injuries that marred both the first round of the playoffs and the Miami Heat’s final bid against James’ Lakers.
The Suns went home in August with an 8-0 record in seeded games that put them very close to a playoff spot. But Williams, the head coach, pointed to what he considered a far more impressive achievement: Silver’s statement on Sept. 30 that the league had not recorded “any cases” of the coronavirus among representatives of the 22 teams and staff. the NBA that began reporting to the campus. July 7.
“When I got there, in my head I thought, ‘I don’t know how they’re going to do this,'” Williams said in a telephone interview. “I kept saying that to myself.”
Williams was not alone in his skepticism, which was understandable given the rising positivity rates from coronavirus tests in Florida in July just as the NBA was on the move. However, an early description by San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said the bubble was “probably the safest place in the world,” he quickly realized.
In preparing for the bubble, Silver worked closely with a special committee that included three players: Dwight Powell of the Dallas Mavericks, Kyle Lowry of Toronto and Chris Paul of Oklahoma City, the president of the players’ union. Powell said in an interview that union and league officials faced “a healthy fear in the preparation process” because they knew that “people’s livelihoods along with their well-being were at stake.” In the three players ‘first phone call after they were inside the bubble, Powell said: “Kyle, Chris and I decided to say,’ Wow. We really are here. This is surreal. ‘
The strongest discipline in the league for violating coronavirus protocols resulted in the Houston Rockets’ Danuel House being sent home during the second round of the playoffs for allowing an unauthorized guest, a woman who had worked on campus, you will enter your hotel room. However, the only interruption to the bubble game was not related to health. The Milwaukee Bucks withdrew before the Aug. 26 playoff game against the Orlando Magic in response to the Jacob Blake police shooting in Wisconsin. That led to a three-day shutdown, with a cancellation of the remainder of the season avoided in part because players didn’t want to give up the platform to amplify their calls for social justice provided by the NBA restart.
Talks between the players to decide to continue the season were contentious, and more “tough negotiations” between the league and the union, as Silver described them at a news conference, await the terms of next season. However, teams could also take advantage of a significant break after a season that lasted 380 days.
Together they have overcome a costly dispute with the league’s partners in China after Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted a tweet in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, then the deaths in January of the Former Commissioner David Stern and Bryant, and then the pandemic. and all its attendant complications.
It took a bubble with unforeseen durability, so robust that “bubble” is now a common word in the NBA lexicon, to guide everyone through the past three months and finish the longest and most turbulent season in history. of the league.
The Washington Wizards’ Ian Mahinmi didn’t even record time on the court at Disney World because the team, without injured Bradley Beal and John Wall, was focused on developing its young players. The Wizards, who started 0-7, were the antithesis of the Suns, but Mahinmi remembered their experience as fondly as Williams.
“Whatever you want to say, it’s better to be in the bubble than outside the bubble,” Mahinmi said.
