The NBA can’t be a distraction if it’s in the center of everything

How can a resumed NBA season be a distraction when their challenges — public health and social justice — are the same as everyone else’s right now?

To the extent that it was ever plausible, the idea that sport and broader society can or should be separated has been dispelled over the past several months. ESPN has done away with its silly policy to stick to sports, athletes have led the way in philanthropy and activism throughout the world, and now sports’ return is providing a fascinating and potentially needless experiment in the clash between perceived normalcy and a public health crisis. It’s atop this backdrop that the debate over whether the NBA’s Orlando bubble will be a “distraction” is happening.

The NBA season, all the way back in March, was the first domino to fall in what would become a recession-causing economic shutdown as the United States attempted to contain the coronavirus. The fallout included the 76ers nearly firing a bunch of people even though they’re owned by multi-millionaires, the reported fracturing of the relationship between two COVID-positive Utah Jazz teammates, and countless other sicknesses and direct-actions. But quickly, the question of when to return took over all of the basketball conversations, and what that gave way to was something nobody could mistake for distracting or irrelevant from solving our national crisis: The league needed some cash.

Commissioner Adam Silver famously told a bunch of reporters on the phone that the league’s revenue was nearly nonexistent, and it’s been long understood that if the league and its players couldn’t make some sort of bubble work, the entire Collective Bargaining Agreement was at stake. With that in mind, the progressive vision of the NBA that allegedly birthed an all-hands response to the pandemic turned toward what amounts to a corporate bailout in the form of unnecessary labor by Disney employees and team staffers. Understanding that this outcome is safer than what Trae Young has been doing the past few weeks in open gyms, it is resoundingly unnecessary for any reason that is not economic.

With the fact of resuming play established by a few of the league’s superstars on a call in May and reaffirmed despite the best intentions of the “disruptor” — which is, I guess, what we’re calling Brooklyn Nets players’ association representative Kyrie Irving now when he asks too many questions – the next series of decisions centered on who was going to brave the Orlando bubble, and how strict it would be. Safety and fun, during a pandemic, are proving predictably impossible, yet of course, the players’ impulse to not be locked up for three months is understandable. The two sides settled on a quarantine zone locked down by law enforcement that is breachable but only by players who are ready to be punished. That still didn’t seem to satisfy everyone, though this was by no means unappreciative or presumptuous on anyone’s part.

The NBA is working through the same issues as our entire society.

Take this one: The mother of Trevor Ariza’s child seemingly using this crazy setup as a weapon in their custody battle. Or the fact that Avery Bradley’s 6-year-old son, Liam, has a bad history with respiratory illnesses, of which COVID-19 is among the worst science has ever seen. Life has been pretty hard to live these past few months for everyone, and these are stories we’re not used to hearing from NBA players. These are the guys who many in the country would prefer to just shut up and dribble. But their stories aren’t getting extra attention right now just because no one is dribbling. Their stories are getting attention because they are incredibly familiar and relatable. Struggling through a broken economy, a broken health care system and a broken justice system have reduced the space between you and me and them.

Of course, the pandemic has almost taken a back seat to the far more wide-reaching crisis of systemic racism in America. The modern movement in sports that began when the Notre Dame women’s basketball team and LeBron James’ Miami Heat wore shirts to protest the death of Eric Garner has exploded. The NFL now will reverse course and allow anyone to kneel during the National Anthem, the entirety of NASCAR is showing up in support of Bubba Wallace after decades of turning a blind eye to the overt racism of some of its fans, and WNBA players like Natasha Cloud and Renee Montgomery are sitting out the season to focus on this furthering this movement. Some of Irving’s main qualms were the aesthetics and practicality of ensuring the league’s ongoing prosperity while owners and executives sit safely collecting checks. The response seemed to be that so long as everyone was on board with the movement, it could continue in an Orlando bubble.

Some seem to still believe that the fight against white supremacy requires a bigger stand than demonstrations and organizing within the NBA — that maybe refusing to play is precisely the type of gesture needed to wake people up. That ship, for better or worse, has sailed, with the full schedule out and teams flying out as early as this week. The concern among those who wanted to do something grand is reasonable: That a great many basketball fans will absorb a predominantly Black product while simultaneously losing sight of the battle Black athletes and their communities have been fighting forever, with the murder of George Floyd on May 25 as the latest spark. This undoubtedly will happen, if it hasn’t already.

Yet most powerful to me (a white man) have been stories like that of Bradley Beal, who just two years ago, coming off his first All-Star appearance and a big new second contract, was treated the same as any number of innocent Black people during our country’s history by a D.C. cop. Or of Aron Baynes, who was brought to tears during a media conference call earlier this month discussing the despair of knowing the ceaseless struggle of his wife, a Black woman. How can basketball be a distraction when the very people on the court are the people so many of us are out on the streets fighting for?

Some will fight to make it so. They will psychologically scratch and claw so as to ignore the uncomfortable truths about their communities and institutions that sit plainly in front of them. These people will not take the cancelation of the season as a symbol or a demonstration or anything more than an inconvenience. They are not the fans who any message from players ought to be directed toward. It’s not Black athletes’ responsibility to convince these fans of anything they refuse to acknowledge. I can’t say even a story like Beal’s, Ariza’s or Baynes’ will matter to them.

The idea of the NBA season being a distraction only holds water if what you look at when you flip on a game is something different from what’s on the news and in your own neighborhood. That’s not the case and never has been.