The National Basketball Association is ramping up its operations inside the bubble environment at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. Even as a cacophony of social media posts have shown players engaging in various pastimes at the Walt Disney World Resort, the increasing number of practice sessions leading to the start of exhibition games this week underscores the focus of franchises on the ultimate objective. It’s right to push for progression, to be sure; outside of restricted, albeit supervised, workouts at home, those slated to burn rubber when the 2019-20 season resumes at the end of the month practically went on hibernation for close to four months. Going full bore from full stop is a recipe for disaster. Even the truncated run-up presents not inconsiderable risk.
Make no mistake. The players are casting moist eyes on the Larry O’Brien Trophy. The hardware provides validation of the work they put into honing their craft, not to mention gives substance to the sacrifice they’re making; they’re literally laying their lives on the line in trekking to Orlando, Florida, a proven pandemic hotbed, and plying their trade. When their campaign was suspended mid-March, they still had a fifth of the regular season to navigate. Now, they’re looking at a severely shortened schedule heading into the playoffs, a fact highlighted all the more by the league’s announcement that their respective standings for individual awards will not be affected by the so-called seeding games.
It’s too bad, really, because a couple of the races looked to have become tighter before Rudy Gobert’s positive test for the novel coronavirus scuttled momentum for the likes of LeBron James and Zion Wiliamson. Not that they’re affected in the grand scheme of things; precisely because of the unique situation, they understand that claiming the Most Valuable Player or Rookie of the Year award is mere icing on the cake. When all is said and done, they’ll be looking back to their experience as a success or a failure based on whether or not they were able to be among the last men standing when the battlesmoke clears.
At this point, the battlesmoke actually clearing is more of a hope than a certainty. The NBA has done all it can to protect the integrity of its campus setting, even going so far as to install a tip line that encourages snitching on players violating established health and safety protocols; while it has been labeled as “petty” by not a few quarters, it proves that the viability of the experiment depends on adherence to even the smallest details. The virus is so insidious and easy to spread due to carelessness that absolute cooperation is key.
Perhaps the players will be so moved by the causes they’re espousing, on the court and off, that they’ll be able to hurdle physical and, yes, mental obstacles all the way to the finish. Buoyed by outstanding work from league commissioner Adam Silver and players association chief Michele Roberts, optimism reigns in the here and now. That said, the real tests will happen farther down the line. So, too, will the real reckoning, and fans are looking forward to celebration and not desuetude.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and Human Resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
