On March 11, 2020, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, received word that the Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert, who at that moment was in an arena filled with nineteen thousand fans, had tested positive for the coronavirus. Silver cancelled the game just before it was to start, and announced that the rest of the N.B.A. season would be suspended—indefinitely. Earlier that day, the World Health Organization had officially declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. But, for many Americans, the N.B.A. shutdown signalled the true beginning of what was to come. This thing had to be serious if a league that averages more than ten billion dollars in annual revenue was willing to leave it all on the table. Yet, by May, there were reports that the N.B.A. was trying to salvage the remainder of the 2019-20 season, and the league’s bottom line, by creating a contained zone where players would be subjected to strict quarantine procedures and daily testing. In this “bubble,” it would be as if COVID did not exist. The league selected an ideal setting to cut itself off from reality: Disney World.
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