Even champion Lakers felt strain in NBA bubble
Lakers guard Danny Green bounced down the hallway that led to the team’s locker room, the start of a long night of partying after the team won the 2020 NBA championship.
“Free. We’re free,” he said, his voice echoing off the walls. “Freedom. I’m (expletive) free.”
The NBA leaves the bubble behind, the experience a major success. The league has finished its season, helping satisfy its obligations to television partners. It has finished its season, crowning a champion without losing a single game to a COVID-19 outbreak. And it’s provided players the opportunity to try to better the world by speaking out about injustice.
So if the pandemic continues to cause problems, if safety cannot be guaranteed anywhere else, the league could end up back here sometime in the future, right?
“No way,” one NBA veteran said.
While the NBA hasn’t ruled out the possibility of returning to a bubble environment for the 2020-21 season, it’s an obvious last resort because of the effects it had on players.
It’s a shared sentiment among players here in the bubble — that the experience was too difficult, too disruptive and too isolating to replicate.
“It’s probably been the most challenging thing I’ve ever done as far as a professional, as far as committing to something and actually making it through,” Lakers star LeBron James said before the NBA Finals. “But I knew when I was coming what we were coming here for. I would be lying if I sat up here and knew that everything inside the bubble, the toll that it would take on your mind and your body and everything else, because it’s been extremely tough.”
Michele Roberts, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, spent the entire restart on campus just like the players. The experience wasn’t always easy to navigate.
Roberts said the early days
of the bubble were great, making her feel “like a kid in a candy store” because of the interactions with players from 22 teams that were still fighting for playoff position.
“When I first got here and all the teams were here, it was all the way live,” Roberts said. “We could not not run into players and have conversations with them. For the first couple of weeks, I was kind of digging it.”
But as the days began to pile up, so did the exhaustion. Then the Aug. 23 shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., pushed everyone over the edge. After the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play, players gathered to figure out what to do. After intense meetings, players from all over the league, including some of its biggest stars, gathered outside to smoke cigars and drink, a desperately needed escape.
“Mentally, it’s kind of like ‘Groundhog Day’ in here,” Green said after teams decided to keep playing. “I don’t want to make it seem that bad, but the bubble is as good as your play, you know? You don’t have many escapes or outside distractions. If you’re not playing well, the walls are gonna close in on you more and more.”
Take Clippers forward Paul George, who went through a horrific slump in the first round of the playoffs, his “Playoff P” nickname becoming a running online joke. It shook him.
“I underestimated mental health, honestly,” George said after rediscovering his jumper. “I had anxiety, a little bit of depression, just being locked in here. I just wasn’t there. I checked out.”
Even before teams entered the bubble, mental performance specialists and health experts knew players would be in for a grind. While some would look at the setup — alone in a hotel with a single job, to play basketball — as a distraction-free environment, the isolation actually could cause more distractions.
“We don’t want to be like Tom Hanks in ‘Cast Away,’ living by ourselves on an island. It’s horrendous,” mental skills coach Graham Betchart said before players entered the bubble. “My guess is this will be the hardest thing ever. Being away from your family, being away from your friends, that’s torture.
“I think this will shift how people look at mental training. It’s something where you have to do it proactively — not reactively.”
Lakers center Dwight Howard admittedly struggled with the bubble.
“For myself, there (have) been times where I was depressed about just having to be in the bubble, not being able to see my family, my kids,” Howard said during the Finals. “So, it could be very difficult. So I just tried to find a way to escape mentally by doing a lot of reading, getting out and walking, talking to a lot of the people who work from the NBA who are here and experiencing the bubble as well. So just trying to share my experiences with them and to listen to their experiences and find hope within each other.”
The Lakers were among the teams to have a sports psychologist among their traveling parties. On campus, there were multiple resources available for anyone who needed help. There was an on-site psychologist as well as telehealth resources.
As people filled out a daily medical questionnaire, they were always asked whether they would like a mental health and wellness professional to reach out.
N BA Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged that getting family members and friends on campus before the second round of the playoffs would’ve been better but that it was a “balancing act” because more people meant more risk of a COVID-19 outbreak.