Bubbleball: Inside the NBA’s Fight to Save a Season by Ben Golliver
It’s NBA playoff time so this week’s book is about basketball during the time of COVID. Ben Golliver is a sports reporter for the Washington Post. That’s a good job for him to have because he is an absolute fanatic in following the National Basketball Association. The book operates on two levels. It of course has a lot of interesting insights about individual players and coaches, perhaps a bit more detail than I needed. Golliver also chronicles the complicated steps involved in saving the 2020 season. After reading the book, I have a lot more respect for the people who are in charge of professional basketball in the US.
The league shutdown the 2019-20 season on March 11, 2020, and tried to figure out if the season could be saved. On March 20, 2020, Rudy Gobert, an NBA All-Star, was the first player diagnosed with the COVID virus. Literally eight billion dollars of revenue was at stake here, much of it generated by the playoffs, which usually started in mid-April. The league did figure out how to finish a shortened season and have the playoffs. All games were played at Disney World in Florida, with intensive COVID protocols in place everywhere. The NBA created a huge sealed bubble to enable 22 teams to compete from July to September.
An opening passage gives us a good handle on what it was like to be a reporter in the bubble. Ben Golliver was one of the few media people who were allowed to cover the games. The NBA had a fairly low quota for reporters and sending your employee to Disney World was really expensive since he or she would be staying in expensive hotels for three months.
Golliver writes, “These were the most abnormal circumstances of my lifetime. Security guards were watching my every move. I had to agree to always wear a face mask and an identification credential in public. I had been issued a Kinexon proximity alarm that would beep like a smoke detector if I stood too close to anyone else. I had listened to detailed security briefings informing me that I would be confined to a small portion of the Coronado Springs Resort and that I wouldn’t be allowed, at first, to get a haircut or walk to the hotel gift shop, let alone drive a car or visit the nearby amusement parks.”
Ben started his adventure by being quarantined in his room for seven days. He was a hostage at “the Happiest Place on Earth.” In July of 2020, when people started to gather for the playoffs, there was no vaccine in sight. We still had a limited understanding of what to do to prevent and treat the infection. President Trump had assured a nervous nation that the virus would magically go away.
After his quarantine, Ben went on a walk. He headed off towards one of the hotels for the players which were much nicer than where the media stayed. A security guard stopped him and said that he could only be on his hotel’s grounds, which greatly limited his walking and running options.
The league had struggled to find a way to save the season. There was no thought of just stopping the games; there was too much money at stake and NBA officials were confident that they could figure out a way to play. At first players, led by LeBron James of the Lakers, came out strongly against playing in an empty arena, which was being proposed. Even without paying fans, the television revenue would save the season financially. Some owners downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic and thought that in a few weeks things would be back to normal, but most people saw a long road ahead for the country before the virus died down.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that they would try to have games beginning in July, but that was no sure thing. The Centers for Disease Control put out an advisory in the spring that no gatherings should exceed 50 people, which would make playing games dicey.
The league secured a lot of tests for its players at a time when tests were scarce, which drew criticism from many. In the spring each team tested players. Although there were no games, players did interact with each other and with their friends and family.
Early on, the federal government was sending out mixed messages about what to do and what not to do about COVID, which didn’t help the league figure out what to do. By mid-May, 2020, there were 20,000 new cases and 1,000 deaths a day but hospitals had survived the onslaught of sick people and things seemed to have stabilized. States were beginning to open back up. NBA officials were worried that players in states without COVID protocols would go to gyms to work out or just get back to normal life which could expose them to the virus.
By late May, Commissioner Silver announced that the league was negotiating with Disney World to restart the season. The theme park had essentially closed months earlier so its operators would welcome the new business the NBA would bring. Silver was a bit nervous that Florida was one of the states that opened up early but it still had high infection rates. That made it even more important to design a bubble that kept players away from situations where they could get infected. Ironically, the NBA, seen as a progressive sports league dominated by Black players, was siding with conservative Republican governors in opening up to play the games.
The league had to negotiate the terms of the bubble with the players union. George Floyd was murdered on May 25, just when both sides were starting to talk. This set things back since the players were really bothered by his death. LeBron James and Jaylen Brown of the Celtics were outspoken in their reaction to the brutality. Negotiations did resume and on June 4, the commissioner announced that there would be 22 teams in the bubble. There would be 8 regular season games with 16 teams moving on to the playoffs. Some of the weaker of the 22 teams were not happy to have to go to Disney World to get eliminated from the competition, but they were going to make a lot of money so they showed up. Individual players could opt out with no penalty. Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets was one who chose not to play.
There were still some points to settle. Many players wanted the league to do more to help the racial situation so the league pledged $300 million over ten years to strengthen the Black community. Some owners also offered to use their arenas as voting places, a move that the players thought could increase Black turnout in the cities.
Players would have to have a three-day quarantine on arriving in Florida, be masked at all times in public, and stay out of each other’s rooms. A player could leave the bubble but he would have to be isolated for ten days upon returning. Players would arrive by July 9. Regular season games would begin on July 30, with the playoffs running from August 17 to October 13 at the latest. The NBA published a 113-page guide which laid out all of the rules. Author Golliver was impressed with how thorough and understandable it was.
A few players getting infected would not shut down the bubble, but if infections became a problem, the games would stop, at least until things settled down. Across Florida, high school and college teams were restarting their seasons without benefit of a bubble. It didn’t work. Most were shut down soon because of so many infections.
The league would have 350 players and hundreds more support personnel in the bubble. Only 10 non-TV reporters would be given credentials to cover the games. Golliver got the Washington Post to pay the $54,000 it would cost to give Ben 93 days at Disney World so he applied for his press pass. He had an extensive physical where he revealed that he had heart problems as a child and had an artificial heart valve. This caused his application to be rejected. Ben called his cardiologist who contacted the NBA’s medical office and assured folks that Ben’s valve posed no risk to his health. The Post would have a reporter at the games.
Ben went to his hotel room to begin his week’s quarantine. Someone delivered a meal of cold pasta, grapes, cheese, and Doritos to him. The food was basically like what you used to eat on airplanes when they served meals - not too good. After his seven-day quarantine, Ben walked around as much as he could. He hung out with referees who were in the same hotel. He was surprised that they seemed like normal people when they weren't blowing a whistle.
Ben did get to interview players (from a long social distance with masks all around), so he got back to filing stories with the Post. Ben noticed that at practices there were more bottles of disinfectant in the stands than people. There was a full-circle moment early. Before the first game there was a two-minute social justice video and many players had shirts or shoes that reflected their views about the importance of improving race relations in the country. Most players kneeled before the first game. Rudy Gobert, the first NBA player infected, scored the first points of the first game in the bubble.
There is a lot in the book about the dynamics of the league and about the teams most likely to win the playoffs – the LA Lakers, the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Los Angeles Clippers. I’ll skip most of that because most people aren’t interested in inside basketball. The Lakers had LeBron; the Bucks had Giannis Anteokounmpo, a Greek-Nigerian super star; and the Clippers had Kawhi Leonard, a perennial All-Star and one of the best players in the league. Those three would dominate much of the bubble play.
At first, there were 7 games a day as the league rushed to finish the season. Once the regular season was over, the schedule would get more normal. At the end of the eight games that finished the season, reporters were invited to a restaurant for a real meal, with serious social distancing. Ben said that it was one of the highlights of the bubble experience.
Every morning, Ben had to take his temperature and blood oxygen level. He then had to have a COVID test as technicians disinfected chairs between swabs. People took COVID very seriously in the bubble. A few players broke the rules and they were put in ten-day quarantines. One player went to his favorite strip club in Orlando to get a take-out meal. He did not get infected but he did get suspended for ten days for violating bubble protocol.
The NBA held many mandatory meetings to remind people about what the rules were. After a few weeks, the league let reporters and other support personnel go to some of the big running tracks for exercise. Ben was very thankful. One of the stops along the running track was a huge shipping warehouse where everything that the players ordered went through before delivery. It was huge and handled 700 to 1,200 packages a day, including exercise machines and alcoholic beverages.
Ben took the COVID rules seriously. Even as he was given more freedom to move about, he was afraid of catching COVID. He had a 3,600-piece Lego set delivered to his room that would keep him inside and away from any possibility of infection.
One thing that bothered him was that just outside the bubble, life was hard. Many stores, restaurants, and motels closed for COVID and stayed closed. People lost jobs while he had a pretty good time in the bubble. The NBA would rake in billions of dollars. Many folks would have no money.
Because I’m Bob in the Basement, I’m a Celtics fan. My team did pretty well in the Bubble, making the final four teams playing for the championship. Celtic Jason Tatum took a big step ahead professionally in the playoffs and the team exceeded expectations.
During the playoffs, a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot a Black man 7 times in the back in mid-August. This really set off many of the players who had seen what happened to George Floyd in May in Minneapolis. The Republican National Convention went on at the same time as the shooting. Players were irritated about convention speakers talking about crime when Black people were the ones getting shot. There was talk of a boycott and the Milwaukee Bucks did not show up for their scheduled Wednesday game. The boycott lasted just a few days but it made a point. It also got some team owners to do more for racial justice. Besides being concerned about violence to minorities, the players were also getting sick of being stuck in the bubble. Not playing games for a few days was a good break.
Doc Rivers, the Clippers coach who had coached the Celtics to their last world championship in 2008, commented on the effect of the bubble on players: “That’s nothing to do with politics or anything else. That’s to do with real life. I knew it (being in the bubble) was hard, but I didn’t see its impact.”
Humans – including the tall ones who played in the NBA – were getting sick of being isolated from other humans.
Unfortunately for Doc, the favored Clippers lost to the Denver Nuggets in the playoffs. As a result, Doc lost his job as coach. At this point, the Clippers and Bucks, two of the three teams favored to win the championship (with LeBron’s Lakers being the other one), were eliminated from the tournament.
“By September, the coronavirus was an afterthought in the bubble,” wrote the author. Eight weeks into the restarted season, not one player had tested positive. There were over 300 players in the playoffs so that is remarkable. The NBA COVID rules ruffled a lot of feathers but they worked. As time went on, the rules loosened and families and loved ones were allowed to visit, and they didn’t get sick because they had to follow the same rules.
One player from Houston broke the rules by having a woman – not his wife – into his room on several occasions. He did not get infected but he was quarantined and couldn’t play for ten days. I bet his wife wasn’t happy. Houston got eliminated early.
By mid-September, most of the original 16 teams had been eliminated from the playoffs. Instead of three hotels housing the players, now there was just one. Ben Golliver sensed that interest in the NBA playoffs was fading now that professional football was starting up. Ben got to go to more places as the COVID protocols wound down.
Ben had his own concerns as the NBA season moved on. He was from Oregon, and his parents were worried about the wildfires that were threatening their property. They were spared but others lost everything. Ben joined a crowd sourcing group that raised a lot of money for people devastated by the fires.
The book has a chapter that recounts the Celtic’s playoff loss to the Miami Heat, no fun for Celtics fans. The bubble experience showed the Celtics that they had to move on from Kembra Walker and Gordon Hayward, two promising acquisitions that didn’t pan out. One could say that the bubble experience paved the way for the Celtics team that made the NBA finals this year.
The author references the January 2020 death of LA Laker great Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash. That was devastating to basketball fans everywhere, but especially to Laker fans. The Lakers won 13 and lost 4 games between Kobe’s death and the shutdown of games on March 11.
I learned of Kobe’s death as I was driving to a wake for an old friend who was part of a luncheon gathering that we had held several times each year. All the radio stations were remembering Kobe. It was a big deal, an even bigger one for professional basketball players whose 2020 would get worse when the pandemic hit a few months later.
In late September, a Kentucky grand jury refused to charge the three Louisville police officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot to death while visiting her boyfriend. Once again, the players were upset although not surprised. Jaylen Brown of the Celtics noted that the pattern of having officers escape charges involving violence against Black people held
In late September, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat were the last teams standing as they competed for the championship. Over 3,600 interviews had been done before the finals. Now there were just two teams left so there weren’t too many interviews. There was a ceremony before the first game but there were very few people there, just the media and the teams. Players interviewed before the game had one thing in common. They felt that playing in the bubble was the hardest thing they’d ever done professionally.
COVID was still a major problem in the US. Many players had thought that by the time their lives went back to normal, the virus would be gone but that didn’t happen. The Lakers were favored to win. Despite some early spunk from the Heat, Miami faded. Several of their top players got injured. LA won the series 4 games to 2. The Lakers won 16 games and lost only 5 in the bubble on their way to a trophy.
COVID restrictions led to a low-key celebration although champagne did flow and confetti did fall from the heights. At the press conference, players kept talking about how bizarre and difficult it was being in the bubble for 93 days. Many felt like just leaving and going home but they stuck it out.
Ben Golliver wrote that, while the final series wasn’t a great one since the Lakers were a much better team, the 2020 playoffs were the most memorable he ever covered. He was very anxious to get back home to Los Angeles, but he was very happy that he had the opportunity to cover bubble basketball.
Ben spent his last few hours walking around the running course that gave him his only exercise. He threw away his proximity alarm and tossed the ring he had to wear at all times so that his location could be tracked. He was nervous about getting infected as he headed to the Orlando airport. In the fall of 2020 the virus was raging in Florida and people did not wear masks or do social distancing.
The virus was still roaring when the next NBA season was about to begin in December of 2020. Many players had tested positive so the league thought about returning to the bubble for the season. That never was a serious option because the players soundly rejected the idea. They were done with being isolated for months on end.
“The NBA bubble was an incredible public health story, an incredible business story, and an incredible basketball story,” Ben wrote at the end of the book. That pretty much sums it up.
Bob’s Take
Professional athletes are not like the rest of us. The book is full of anecdotes about how players prepare for games and work out during the off-season. Many are fanatical about honing their craft. Many of them play through pain and still contribute to their team’s success. LeBron James is particularly intense about how he gets ready for games.
NBA players and Donald Trump did not get along. During his presidency, championship teams skipped going to the White House after their victorious run. President Trump was critical of the fact that many players, as an act of solidarity, did not stand up for the national anthem on the opening night of the bubble schedule. His criticism of them was interesting in light of the fact that the NBA chose to come back to work despite the raging virus, which is exactly what President Trump was urging businesses to do.
LeBron James was at the center of the action in the bubble. He is a polarizing star with some people not liking his grandstanding, but he makes his mark. He was the voice of the players in working through bubble problems, and he was one of the main spokesmen for his fellow athletes in talking about racial justice issues, many of which arose in 2020.
The NBA made a good business move by creating the bubble. Setting up the playoffs in Disney World cost $200 million. The playoffs generated $1.5 billion dollars, a great return on investment, although overall revenue for the season was down.
The NBA did a great job in dealing with the pandemic. The bubble concept was conceived, organized and implemented very well. Not one NBA player tested positive during the 93 days of play. That is remarkable, the best job that could be done in dealing with the virus.
