2019-20 was the most chaotic year of basketball (and sports) ever

Injuries, pandemics, death, the potential crumbling of an institution, the potential rise of little brother —these past 10-12 months have been wonky.

These past four months have mainly been filled with questions going unanswered starting at the top, lack of consistent knowledge, inability to obtain much Vitamin D, fear, paranoia and a lot more red wine drinking on my end. In unprecedented times of generic freedoms being stripped — the one that has left a big void in millions has been a lack of sport.

Sports represent an escape. It gives you something to look forward to when not much is going right. It gives people a sense of camaraderie and also gives humans a way to relate to one another, even if they are from other sides of the world. It’s truly a unifying institution. Never has something turned off the world quite like COVID-19. Even in times of great economic despair, war and other pandemics — sports were always there to serve as a distraction to the harsh realities of the time. Now all we can do is watch reruns, twiddle our thumbs, knock over lamps trying to do a home workout and stare at the ceiling and cry.

The funny part of this, the NBA had a big hand in the zeitgeist of coronavirus with Rudy Gobert getting sick, becoming a meme and terrifying his teammates and opponents. The first sign of this being a real thing to worry about probably should have been when they shut down my office or when a girl, that same week, decided a date with me wasn’t smart with everything going on. She probably scrolled down to my high school pictures on Instagram and couldn’t get the scene out of her head, but the rona’ reason makes sense too, I guess.

Truly though, the NBA season getting suspended was the first instance where I said, “Damn, guess this is serious.” Since then, life has sucked major buns.

Even before coronavirus threatened everyone’s well-being, the back half of 2019 brought a lot of weirdness into the game of basketball.

For one, you had injuries to Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant in the playoffs that all but tanked the Warriors chances in 2020 and led to the first NBA championship won by a team outside of the U.S. You also had a wild free-agency class that saw momentum swing in the potential favors of both little brothers: The Nets and Clippers only to see some of most historic teams in the NBA, the Lakers and Celtics, return the favor. The Knicks, who were long rumored to make a free-agency splash, were left grasping at straws (again).

You had the Zion Williamson draft where the New Orleans Pelicans, long in the doldrums of attendance, visibility and interest — both in their home city and nationally — received their savior, the same summer their franchise forward, Anthony Davis, bailed. Then Zion got hurt and was only able to play 19 games this season while we all suffered through watching Brandon Ingram throw up 30+ shots a game weekly on national TV because ESPN and ABC thought Williamson would be playing.

We also saw Gov. Gavin Newsom of California sign a bill to allow college athletes to hire agents and make money from endorsements and more top-level high school athletes, like R.J. Hampton and LaMelo Ball, take their talents overseas.

Damian Lillard dropped a legitimately good rap album and beefed with multi-platinum artist Shaquille O’Neal.

Load management took over the news and was made into a big deal for some reason even though now-Clipper Kawhi Leonard literally won a championship a few months before with the Toronto Raptors doing the exact same thing and has a potential degenerative knee issue.

The basketball weirdness kicked up a notch when 2020 started

I’m missing a few but you get the point. We were seeing the weirdness start to trickle in and then Jan. 1, 2020 hit and it was like when you’re boozing sitting down and then you stand up and the drunk hits you all at once. Just a cacophony of absolute crap erupted in our faces.

First, we had perhaps one of the saddest days in sports history when Kobe Bryant died on Jan. 26 of a tragic helicopter crash, along with his daughter and seven others. An ominous start to a terrible year that should have been a sign that 2020 was going to be Sharknado 4 levels of bad.

Second, this season of college basketball was one of the most vanilla seasons around. After James Wiseman of Memphis was suspended for the season, what stars were left to root for? Last season you had the three-headed Duke monster, the Virginia revenge narrative, upstart Texas Tech, Tacko Fall and more. This season you had…Obi Toppin? No teams that could hold onto the number one ranking? Just an all-around eh season that concluded without a March Madness that could have saved the overall narrative of a boring season.

You thought the season was bad? How about the G-League now poaching top recruits to play professional ball starting next season. With the addition of the “Professional Path Program”, the NBA has loosened the ropes a bit on its age-19 entry into the NBA by paying top recruits to participate in the G-League season, all performing on the same team.

When 2021 No. 1 recruit Jalen Green decided to forgo college to play a season in the G-League, he traded textbooks for an expected $1 million payday with a contract that CNBC reported was around $700,000 and that will be increased into seven figures with endorsements he’s eligible for.

The baseline payday for the Pathway Program is $125,000, with the capability of signing endorsements AND you also receive full scholarships to Arizona State University, which has a partnership with the NBA. While we know ASU is mostly for pool parties and Instagram model wannabes — you get paid, you get to play against tougher competition that readies you more for the rigors of professional ball AND get free college? What blue-chip recruit wouldn’t do this?

This, along with California legislation allowing amateur athletes to profit from their likeness, could bring sweeping changes to how the NCAA handles its potential athletes. It doesn’t seem too far off that we see players in a pay-structure at universities and the crazy part about this? The NCAA might have to do so to keep collegiate basketball as we know it thriving.

The potential crumbling of the collegiate basketball institution however pales in comparison to the crumbling of the world economy, the world as a whole, millions of deaths and all my favorite dive bars due to a novel pandemic that has put the world at a standstill now for months.

But now we have light at the end of the tunnel….well not for the second wave of COVID that seems to be hitting states dumb enough to open up without proper regulations and knowledge of what this disease could morph into. The light is the re-opening of sports in America. The first league to re-open with any modicum of success was the NWSL, which saw zero COVID cases during its Challenge Cup that ended Sunday. Held in Utah, this was a good sign for what could come in the “Bubble World” of sports in the Summer of COVID.

Now we finally have baseball and basketball again. Both the NBA and WNBA have kicked off and despite some wonky decision making from Lou Williams, Richaun Holmes and a beer shotgunning contest that features players chugging way too slow, it’s been a COVID-free success so far. Baseball, eh not so much but here’s to hoping the back-half of 2020 can be a bit more positive than the earlier stages. Not getting my hopes up really (WEAR A MASK PEOPLE) but hey, gotta be hopeful right?