NBA Bubble is 2020's Biggest Success Story

Photo: Joe Shlabotnik

by Julian Spivey
The biggest success story of 2020 – and I don’t just mean the biggest sports success story, but overall success story – just wrapped up on Sunday night (Oct. 11).
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I’m talking about the NBA bubble at the Disney Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Fla., which was a major success and truly showed the rest of the country (though much of the country seems indifferent toward it) how we could move forward amidst a deadly pandemic.
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On March 11 when the NBA abruptly suspended the season due to COVID-19 after Utah Jazz All-Star center Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus many felt that was it – the end of the season. When the pandemic worsened shortly after and the NBA went through April and May and past when the NBA Finals would have typically ended in June without any decision on a resumption to the season it seemed for certain the season would never resume.

But the NBA never gave up. Commissioner Adam Silver along with the NBA Players Association were always determined, even when racial unrest in the country had some thinking things would be better for the country without the distraction of the NBA, to continue the season and to crown a 2019-20 NBA champion.

In June, the league announced a very ambitious return that would host the remaining eligible teams for the finish of the season and then the playoffs in a bubble in Orlando that came with 113 pages of safety protocol and a bundle of skepticism.

My buddy Preston, who often collaborates on NBA articles with me here on the site, never once thought the NBA season would resume (we were both skeptical on whether or not it should, but I felt the players deserved the opportunity).

The fact that they were able to begin and tonight finish with the Los Angeles Lakers being crowned the champions of the league in a series against the surprising and hard-fighting Miami Heat was maybe not a miracle, but at least a small cherry on top of what’s been the worst year for most of us living in this country.

The greatest statistic of 2020 in any sport is zero. Zero. Not typically a number that inspires awe amongst sports fans, but that’s how many positive COVID tests the NBA saw in its bubble and that number might well be a miracle.

It’s also proof that the commissioner of the NBA Adam Silver has run a professional sports league better than the President of these United States and the government under him has run the country. The NBA proved with its bubble and more than 100 pages of safety protocols that life can succeed during a pandemic with order and rules and people who care. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the country doesn’t seem to have the desire and will power the NBA had to succeed.

In a recent ESPN article, Andy Thompson, the Vice President of Production for NBA Entertainment, said: “This was going to be a one-of-a-kind thing. This was the NBA’s moonshot.”

It certainly was. 

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