The New York Times - USA (2020-08-06)

THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSTHURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2020 Y B9

I’ve covered the N.B.A. for nearly 30 years, but life in the

league’s bubble introduces new sights and sounds almost daily.

Allow me to share a few snapshots — things you would see

only in the tightly controlled campus at Walt Disney World.

EVERYONE IN THE BUBBLEis

asked to wear a proximity

sensor to promote social

distancing. A chirping

alarm sounds if two people

wearing sensors are within

six feet each of other for 10

seconds — provided both

are actually wearing them

and have charged them

overnight.

SENSORS ARE OPTIONALfor

players, many of whom

privately scoff at the idea of

wearing a device that is not

a movement tracker but is

widely described that way.

Everyone else, including

reporters, is required to

wear them. That leads to

lots of chirping on bus rides

and in postgame news

media scrums when main-

taining six feet of distance

is nearly impossible.

SPEAKING OF BUSES,the

small group of reporters

here ride them daily to the

three game venues at

ESPN’s Wide World of

Sports complex. This mes-

sage, taped to the door or

window on all buses, refers

to the driver.

EVERY DAYin the bubble

starts the same for report-

ers. We record our tem-

perature and oxygen satu-

ration readings via a

league-sanctioned app to

receive access at check-

points within the bubble.

Then we head to the testing

room, with access set aside

exclusively for reporters in

the 9 a.m. hour, to receive

three shallow throat swabs

and one shallow swab of

each nostril — daily.

THE TRADITIONAL N.B.A.

BENCHis gone. To keep the

area as safe as possible,

there are three rows of

socially distanced chairs.

Players are assigned seats

furnished with an individ-

ual Gatorade station to

ensure no sharing of

drinks.

SAN ANTONIO’S GREGG

POPOVICH, at 71, is the

oldest coach in the N.B.A.

He is among the few

coaches who wears a mask

while coaching games,

despite the impediment to

voice projection. When

asked why he stays faithful

to the mask, Popovich

replied, “I don’t want to

die.” Coaches such as

Popovich and Houston’s

Mike D’Antoni have ex-

pressed surprise about the

quality of play after the

long layoff. There is cau-

tious optimism that the

bubble can hold through

October to allow the N.B.A.

to produce a legitimate

conclusion to the 2019-20

season.

OF COURSE,there is no

guarantee that the N.B.A.

can continue to keep the

coronavirus from infiltrat-

ing this first-of-a-kind vil-

lage that houses 22 teams.

But it already seems clear

that the bubble approach

was the only approach that

had any shot in 2020, espe-

cially given the challenges

Major League Baseball has

already faced in its come-

back.

The N.B.A.’s New World

Of Dribbles and Chirps

By MARC STEIN

ILLUSTRATION BY THE NEW YORK TIMES; GETTY IMAGES

POOL PHOTO BY

KIM KLEMENT

PRO BASKETBALL

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. —
The shift was seemingly slight
and went unannounced, but it
was undeniably significant for
the N.B.A.
Throughout the
coronavirus pan-
demic, memos
from the league
office had been
titled “HIATUS.”
The N.B.A. sent 97 of them to
teams from March 12 through
July 29, while the season was on
an indefinite hold.
That finally changed last
Thursday, hours before the Utah
Jazz beat the New Orleans Peli-
cans in the first N.B.A. game that
had counted since March 11.
Memo No. 98 had a new title:
“RESTART.”
Four months is a longer hiatus
than the N.B.A. ever envisioned
when it began using the term,
but there were also times in April
and May when many around the
league feared that the 2019-20
season would not resume. Friday
marks one month since the 22
teams that qualified for the re-
start began arriving at Walt
Disney World, and the steady
flow of real games has spawned
some optimism throughout the
N.B.A. campus.
An occasional coronavirus test
has been missed, and many
teams are spooked by the
prospect of false positives
sidelining key players, but the
league has thus far kept the
coronavirus from infiltrating its
village. In addition, players are
duly seizing the platform of the
rebooted season to amplify their
social justice messages, while the
quality of play has received
unexpectedly good reviews after
five days of games.
“In all honestly, it’s better than
I was expecting,” San Antonio
Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich
said. Many teams, Popovich said,
look “more in rhythm that I ever
expected” after such a long lay-
off.
In an interview before the
restart, Commissioner Adam
Silver told me: “We continue to
approach it with humility and
recognize that there’s a fair
amount that’s unpredictable. We
have a long way to go, but we’re
learning every day.”
A few more items from my
bubble notebook:

Milwaukee’s unique approach to
the restart got my attention.

Upon arrival at Disney World,
Milwaukee’s coaching staff
backed off for the first week and
let its players engage in the sort
of pickup games commonplace at
team practice facilities after
Labor Day in a typical year.
The idea was to ease into
structure. Tempting as it surely

was to zoom right into practices

after such a long layoff to make

up for lost time, I’m told that the

Bucks wanted to move cau-

tiously and pace themselves in

the belief that, if things go right,

they will be in Florida for three

months chasing a championship.

I was alerted to the Bucks’

concept by an admiring rival

who found their patience

“smart.” Time will tell, of course,

but my reaction was the same.

For decades, Popovich has (un-

knowingly) been preparing for

bubble coaching.

As an assistant coach under both

Larry Brown (in San Antonio)

and Don Nelson (in Golden

State), Popovich watched as

these coaching giants used base-

ball-style hand signals to call out

plays and became a fan. Hand

signals have since become a

staple of Popovich’s playbook to

an even larger degree. In a story

I did years ago on Popovich’s

enduring partnership with Tim

Duncan, the former Spur Robert

Horry said Popovich could have

been “a great third-base coach.”

In the bubble, Popovich is

coaching games with a mask on,

in a nod to warnings from the

Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention that people 65 and

older are at greater risk for

complications from the coro-

navirus. Popovich, the league’s

oldest coach at 71, uses his exten-

sive array of signals to overcome

the limits on projecting his voice

caused by the mask.

“It really helps — big time,”

Popovich said.

From Nelson, he said,

Popovich learned to script nu-

merous plays on index cards to

then communicate via hand

signals for specific players

against a particular opponent.

The challenge in Florida,

Popovich has found, is finding

pockets to store all of his cards

because coaches are not wearing

suits to bubble games.

“Since I was with Nellie, I’ve

done it every single game of my

career,” Popovich said.

Missing three starters, San

Antonio has been one of the

surprise teams of the restart,

relying on younger players and

playing at a faster pace. The

Spurs could have moved to

within a game of No. 8 Memphis

in the West had they completed

an impressive second-half come-

back attempt Monday night in

what became an agonizing 132-

130 loss to Philadelphia.

(Footnote that is actually a

huge deal at the Stein household

back in Dallas: Shake Milton,

who sank the game-winning 3 for

Philadelphia, went to the same

high school in Owasso, Okla., as a

certain newsletter curator’s

wife.)

Patty Mills is as fond of Sixers

Coach Brett Brown as he is of

Popovich.

This Mills tale I was not able to

include in Sunday’s feature about

the San Antonio guard and his

emerging activism will explain

why: At his first Olympics in

2008, with great pride, Mills

hung Australia’s Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islands flags from

the balcony of his room in Beijing

in the Olympic Village. One of the

flags was given to him by his

uncle Danny Morseu, who had

taken it to the 1980 and 1984

Olympics as a member of Aus-

tralia’s team.

“My two identities,” said Mills,

whose mother, Yvonne, is Aborig-

inal and whose father, Benny, is a

Torres Strait Islander.

At the 2012 Olympics in Lon-

don, on a much lower floor, Mills

repeated his ritual with the two

flags representing Australia’s

Indigenous populations, only to

be ordered by a few Australian

Olympic Committee officials to

take the flags down. An argu-

ment ensued, Mills said, before

he turned to Brown, who doubles

as Australia’s head coach. Mills

was distraught after the federa-

tion officials ignored pleas from

Matt Nielsen, Mills’ teammate

and Australia’s white captain, to

let him keep the flags displayed.

“Brownie absolutely squashed

the whole thing in 10 minutes,”

Mills said. “Before Brownie and

Pop, I never really had support

like that from someone of author-

ity to help me educate people on

my environment on who I am.”

I did not make new postseason

predictions before the restart. Let

me explain.

Some of that reluctance admit-

tedly stems from the uncertainty

that reigns all over the N.B.A.

map after Golden State’s five

consecutive years representing

the Western Conference in the

finals. Yet it’s also another exam-

ple of the struggle to mentally

connect the restart to the season

that was paused so abruptly

nearly five months ago.

I agreed with the Clippers’

Kawhi Leonard when he said

recently that “basically it’s a new

season” after such a long break.

But that’s only how it feels. Ros-

ters are essentially the same as

they were on March 11 — unless

you’re the Nets. The standings

were not reset. There isn’t much

to go off in terms of making new

predictions.

So I stuck to my usual rule,

stubborn as it may sound, that

the predictions I lodged in Octo-

ber remain in effect. I had the

Bucks beating the Clippers in the

finals when the whole staff did

the crystal-ball thing 10 months

ago. And that indeed remains a

very plausible finals matchup —

so long as you overlook my two

conference finals picks (Bucks

over Sixers; Clippers over Jazz)

that instinct tells me have not

aged terribly well.

The Season Restarts, and So Far the Bubble Is Holding

MARC

STEIN

ON PRO

BASKETBALL

Clockwise from left, Gian-

nis Antetokounmpo and

the Bucks are prepared for

a long stay at Disney; Patty

Mills continued his activ-

ism; the Spurs’ Gregg

Popovich found ways to

coach with his mask on.

MIKE EHRMANN/GETTY IMAGES

POOL PHOTO BY MIKE EHRMANN

Go behind the N.B.A.’s curtain
with the league’s foremost expert.
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POOL PHOTO BY ASHLEY LANDIS