Life in the National Basketball Association Bubble: A Space for Social Justice During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

On March 11, 2020, the National Basketball Association (NBA) became the first major professional sporting organization in the United States to suspend its season due to COVID-19 concerns. Three months later, the NBA's Board of Governors announced their plan to return-to-play. Twenty-two of the thirty NBA franchises were invited to the Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida to finish the regular season and begin the playoffs. The NBA's plan for keeping everyone safe from the virus was to establish a quarantine zone, colloquially referred to as the NBA Bubble. Within this ‘bubble' environment all of the players, coaches, staff, media, and others, were quartered at three specifically-chosen hotels located within the Disney complex, and the remaining basketball games were played in spectator-less venues on-site at the ESPN Wide World of Sports. This chapter discusses the creation of the Bubble and explores various aspects of the players' lives within this unique space. It also examines how the Bubble encouraged activism and social justice endeavors in association with the Black Lives Matter movement following the police-related deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.