After months of planning and preparation, the 2019-20 NBA season is set to resume on Thursday night inside the league’s bubble environment at Disney World. When the idea was first proposed everyone assumed it was a temporary measure to make sure the league could finish the season and crown a champion. But with the country still in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic, next season may have to be played inside a bubble as well.
During an interview on Tuesday, National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts admitted that unless something drastic happens in regards to the country’s health situation, a bubble may be the only way to play the 2020-21 season. Via ESPN:
“If tomorrow looks like today, I don’t know how we say we can do it differently If tomorrow looks like today, and today we all acknowledge — and this is not Michele talking, this is the league, together with the PA and our respective experts saying, ‘This is the way to do it’ — then that’s going to have to be the way to do it.”
“I’m not in the Trump camp in believing it’s all going to go away in two weeks, but I’m praying, praying that there will be a different set of circumstances that will allow us to play in a different way. But because I don’t know, all I know is what I know now. So it may be that, if the bubble is the way to play, then that is likely gonna be the way we play next season, if things remains as they are.”
“I hope not. Because I’d like to think that people can live with their families. But I can only comment on what I know, and what I know is right now.”
So far, the NBA‘s bubble experiment has been working. Since the initial arrival and quarantine period, there’s been zero COVID-19 cases inside the Disney World camp, and Roberts said both her and the players have been happy with the conditions.
There are concerns, however, that the league — along with the MLS and MLB — has been disrupting the testing process in Florida. Not only is the league using massive amounts of tests every single day, but they’re jumping the line to get extremely fast turnaround times. Meanwhile, some doctors in Florida have had patients wait more than two weeks to get their results back.
“We’re in a crisis situation where we’re setting records almost daily in terms of how many people are turning positive for COVID-19,” Dr. Adrian Burrowes told the Los Angeles Times last week. “And I can’t get the results back on a patient of mine. Meanwhile, these pro sports teams are being tested daily to semi-daily and getting the results back immediately. In some cases, they’re using the same lab.”
While the league has claimed they are not diverting test capacity from the community, that does not appear to be the case. If they were to set up a bubble with all 30 teams to play an entire season, that issue would seemingly only get worse, and there would be other big logistical challenges.
In addition, there’s the family aspect that Roberts touched on. It’s one thing to leave your family and head down to Disney World for a few months in order to finish the playoffs and crown a champion. Doing that for an entire season is a different story, and it’s hard to see players agreeing to that.
At the same time, there would be massive financial implications to not playing next season, and the MLB’s experiment with having teams travel from city to city has broken down almost immediately.
All told, there are enormous challenges ahead for the league, and there will be no easy decisions. For now, however, all we can do is hope we get through the rest of this season with everyone safe and healthy. If that happens, then we can start worrying about what the league is going to do next season.
