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NBA Bubble
Although the NBA bubble occurred in a COVID-19 hotspot (Florida), the NBA and the players did a great job of coming together to restart the NBA as safe as possible. The NBA bubble, also referred to as the Disney or Orlando bubble, was the quarantine zone created by the National Basketball Association (NBA) to prevent its players from contracting the COVID-19 virus as they prepared to wrap up the final eight games of the normal season and through the playoffs in Bay Lake, Florida near Orlando. Only twenty-two teams were invited to participate out of the thirty teams in the NBA, all the games were held in empty stadiums behind closed doors at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex while the teams were accommodated at the Disney World hotels (Anderson 12).
The 2019/20 season of the NBA was suspended on 11th March 2020 due to the sudden surge in COVID-19 cases. The NBA bubble was an effort by the NBA to save the season. The project cost $170 million. The twenty-two parties invited to participate were within six games of a playoff spot when the pandemic cut the season short. The playoffs resumed in July when the NBA approved the NBA bubble. Although both the coaches and players had mixed feelings about the project, they used it as a platform for the BLM (Black Lives Matter) movement. The bubble accommodated three exhibit scrimmages in late July and eight additional normal season games by the invited teams to establish the playoff seeding. The season finally came to an end as the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Miami Heat in the final. The NBA mounted 5.2m screens on the courts to exhibit multimedia content and a mosaic of virtual fans conducted by Microsoft Teams as the spectators were not allowed to attend to watch the games in person. The games were limited to only three arenas as a precautionary measure. Advertisement campaigns “It’s a whole new game” were promoted by the NBA to support the resumption (Anderson).
The eight teams that were not invited into the tournament were in talks with the NBA to organize an eight-team bubble in Chicago to participate in a competitive environment instead of being out of the rest of the season from March to December. There was a lot of doubt on the second bubble’s success, but the plan fell through eventually. For the project to be successful, the NBA laid out a one hundred page rule book. The rules included quarantine periods, testing requirements, and the potential for financial penalties upon the termination of the set rules by any individual from the players to the coaches involved in the project. Any player required to quarantine would be required to resume training or participation in games only after the isolation period due to positive feedback from a number of tests.
The players were also required to wear masks, with training sessions and eating breaks being the only exceptions. The cleaning and training staff were also required to wear masks and gloves at all times. All the Disney facilities were free to be used by the players. The bubble was extremely effective in preventing the spread of the virus, particularly to the players enabling the season to resume as early as 30th July. Through the cooperation of all individuals involved, the project resulted in successful streaks of zero positive cases from the players for as long as three weeks. This success led to the admission of close friends and family of the players admitted into the bubble from 19th August. The season ended without a single positive case from the bubble (Clark 8).
Works Cited
Anderson, Sam. “What I Learned Inside The NBA Bubble.” Nytimes.Com, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/magazine/nba-bubble.html. 5-12
Clark, Nathan. “The NBA Restart: A Numbers Game.” BYU Scholarsarchive, 2020, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/marriottstudentreview/vol3/iss4/34/. 4-8