Total Rebound: A dystopian tale from inside the NBA bubble

The NBA bubble works, but what if it’s the only thing that does? What if NBA players are trapped inside, hooping for eternity as civilization crumbles around them?

The sound wasn’t exactly a thunderclap, but Zion did awake screaming. The sweat dripped off him, soaking the bedsheets. His lungs gasped for air. He felt like he’d been running. He’d felt like he’d been balling. But, now, he had to face the facts that maybe everything he’d thought was real was nothing more than a dream — and that was good news.

In his dream, the New Orleans Pelicans had been playing inside the Disney Bubble for the NBA’s Restart. In his dream, the New Orleans Pelicans had lost to the San Antonio Spurs. In his dream, the New Orleans Pelicans no longer had a shot at the postseason. He reached for his phone. He checked the time and date. The dream wasn’t real. The game hadn’t even started yet. The Pelicans were still alive.

Similar dreams plagued Zion for the remainder of the restart. Before defeating the Sacramento Kings, he dreamed they lost. Before defeating the Orlando Magic, he dreamed they lost. He dreamed they lost until his team delivered an NBA championship to the people outside the bubble pulling for his New Orleans Pelicans.

In his dreams, the games were played in packed arenas, and he fed off the roar of the crowd. When he was awake, the games were played in empty gyms at the Disney Sports Complex. But he wasn’t sure whether the games with crowds or the games without felt more real. In his waking hours, he could also watch the games he had already played. In the television footage, large faces hovered in the background, giving off the aura that the games were played on some trash planet like in the movie Thor: Ragnarok.

Then again, Zion had slept through much of that movie when he saw it in the theater. He remembered some CGI fight scenes where Thor and the Hulk looked more real fighting on an alien planet than old actors ever did fighting on a non-CGI Earth in older films. By the end of that film, Thor becomes king of Asgard, but there is no Asgard anymore.

Zion checked his phone. He had time before his next game. Maybe he should watch that Thor movie again. He called out, “Oh, Toodles!”

“Yes, Zion?” responded the Clubhouse computer.

“Play Ragnarok.”

Toodles played a Led Zeppelin song.

“No, not this — the movie,” Zion corrected the artificial intelligence that kept him and his teammates on schedule.

The new season began with the Pelicans playing the Memphis Grizzlies. The game was the first one in a long time that had not been preceded by a dream. In some ways, not having to play a game he had already played felt refreshing. He did not have to retrace what worked. He did not have to amend what failed. He could just play, and he felt an extra bounce in his step.

Before the tip, Zion embraced Ja Morant.

“All due respect, we about to repeat, bruh,” Zion whispered in his rival’s ear.

“Um, all due respect, we the champs, bruh,” Ja corrected his rival.

Then both players experienced what could only be described as a ripple in time. The moment was a glitch. They embraced again.

“All due respect, we about to repeat, bruh,” Zion whispered in his rival’s ear.

“We taking it this year, though.”

The two let go of one another, but for a moment, they appeared to occupy the same space — it was difficult to tell who was wearing teal and who was not, as if the two players and their jerseys — the particles that made them — had become entangled.

Zion stood next to the referee. He stood staring at Jaren Jackson. The ball floated into the air. When he jumped, he opened his eyes: He was sitting up in what could only be described as one of those hyper-sleep spaceship beds you sometimes see in movies like Interstellar or Planet of the Apes.

Is the NBA bubble just a ripple in time and space?

He looked around the room, and the room was clearly not his. The room wasn’t even a hotel room — it was a laboratory. He felt a tug in each arm. In each forearm, a tube ran into a metal circle, like a socket, capping his arteries. He wasn’t sure if it was the best idea, but he pulled the tubes loose from the circular sockets. They leaked blue plasma onto the sci-fi coffin’s inner surface. Then a beeping sounded from the other side of the room. On one computer screen, the words DNA SUPPLY INHIBITED flashed repeatedly, and on another, the words MEMORY RESOURCE DENIED flashed. Zion climbed out of his chamber. He looked down at his body expecting to see a Terminator-sized body delivered from some cutting-edge future, but instead, he saw a frame withered by the past. He was not himself. He took two steps and fell to the floor. He passed out, drooling cool blue spittle on the tile.

When Zion awoke, he was still on the floor. He also had not dreamed at all. His unconscious state had been a blank slate as far as he could tell. He pulled himself up to a standing position by grabbing onto a nearby medical cart. His arms were smaller and weaker than he remembered —  his legs too. He pushed the cart in front of his body as a nursing home patient might push a walker. He exited the laboratory and entered a long corridor that on either side was lined with doors. Some of the lights flickered and some gave no light at all. As he walked by each metal door, he peered into the glass porthole to see a room identical to the one he had left behind. On each door was a single word or phrase. Some read ‘Equality’ and others ‘Justice.’ Most of the words were non-specific abstractions.

When Zion arrived at an open door, he would push his cart into the lab and approach the room’s sleeping chamber. He found these chambers to be empty, but he could make out the indentation where a body must have laid for quite some time before waking or being removed. He shuddered at the realization that he didn’t know whether a body was luckier to be inside or outside a chamber. In most of the laboratories, the computer screens did not flash or beep. Instead, they were dead silent.

After some time, he realized the hallway turned in on itself—looping in what had to be a circle. He also found himself struggling to breathe. He tried to time his wheezing with the chirp of the cart’s one squeaky wheel. He arrived at the opening to another hallway. Mounted on the wall was what appeared to be a map of wherever he was. The map consisted of three circles. He stared at it for some time. He wondered whether he should turn down the other hallway or continue down the one he was on. He looked back at the map. He blinked. The familiarity of the image dawned on him slowly. One of the circles was a head. The other two were ears. He was staring at an outline of Mickey Mouse. Where in Disney Hell was he?

The door wasn’t like the others. This one looked like it belonged to an elevator. He pressed a button on the wall. A green light flashed. Nothing appeared to be happening, but he thought — or sensed — he heard a whirring mechanism on the other side of the door. He waited. He leaned on the cart. He caught his breath. The door finally opened. He pushed the cart through. He looked for the panel where all the buttons to all the different floors should have been, but there was only one button. The choice was simple: Stay on the floor where he was or push the button and go wherever it took him. He pushed the button. He felt the elevator rise. Once upon a time, he remembered being able to do the same, but he didn’t feel up to it now.

The door opened. Natural light beamed in. He leaned once more into the cart and exited the elevator. He discovered himself inside what could only be described as a greenhouse. The walls and ceiling were all transparent as glass, but they were coated in reddish dust — like rust. He heard a sound like Darth Vader breathing behind him. The wheel on his cart squeaked. He stopped. He teetered. He rolled it back. The wheel squeaked again. He looked slowly over his shoulder. A man wearing an oxygen mask slumped on the floor next to the elevator door. An oxygen tank sat next to him. Zion let go of the cart. He approached the man. He rested each hand on a knee, bending over like he was waiting for someone to shoot a foul shot late in a game on the second night of a back-to-back. He stared into the old eyes drooping above the mask’s rim. He recognized them. He recognized the receding hairline and gray-patched beard too. “King,” he whispered, and the ancient man looked up into his old eyes and sucked in a gasp of oxygen.

The man raised an arm to remove the mask, but the arm collapsed before making it there — as if an invisible hand had slapped it away. Zion reached out and lowered the mask to the man’s chin.

The man coughed lightly. Then the man coughed heavily. He gathered what breath he could and said, “Take it,” and by it, he meant the oxygen supply. “They’re out there somewhere.” His finger pointed out beyond the greenhouse walls. “Balling,” he exhaled, and a tear looked like it might drop from his eye.

Zion lifted the tank onto his cart. He worried the weight might break him, but the tank was lighter than he expected. His body had grown weaker, but the world had grown lighter. He pressed toward the greenhouse chamber’s doors. He looked back over his shoulder. He saluted the man now sleeping by the elevator shaft. He donned the oxygen mask, feeling its elastic band hug the back of his head. When the door opened, he pushed himself out into the red dust and the light. He followed the tracks in front of him. He pushed the cart until it stopped. He walked out to see what was there. The damn thing had wedged itself on a basketball half-buried in red dirt. He looked around and around, but there was no one around. He was balling alone, but he remembered a time when that wasn’t the case. A tear dropped from his eye and froze in the cool Martian air.

In the distance, silhouetted against the setting sun, he saw what could only be described as animatronic presidents moving mechanically over what must have been a red dirt basketball court. A long and lanky Abraham Lincoln dunking all over some very round and low to the ground stool pigeon who happened to be all caught up in the moment.  Was it real? Zion had no way of denying the attraction’s coldhearted truth: History is for the robots.