The NBA’s bubble is a confusing world
Bucks guard Korver is left with mixed feelings
Kyle Korver is a team-first guy in every aspect of his life, which means he spends several mornings working through traveling-parent guilt.
Because right now he can be a very good Milwaukee Bucks teammate as well as brother and supporter of Black Lives Matter, but it's at the temporary sacrifice of being a present father and husband.
“You know, it's just really strange for me,” Korver said.
While we wait for scrimmages and games to resume for the 2020 NBA Bubble season, we are getting some pretty good stories from the sociological experiment happening at the closed-off Disney Resort complex. Players, coaches and team staffers have committed to being there for months with no passes out and no visitors allowed.
For the 39-year-old Korver, that leaves a huge hole in his world now that he's separated – because of the NBA's pandemic safety and quarantine protocols – from his wife and their three children.
“I feel like I'm 24. The only thing I have to do all day is be at practice on time and work hard. That's it,” said Korver, still stunned at this new life status.
“I have, like, no other responsibility in my day. I spend the first couple hours of my day just, like, working through my guilt that my wife is home taking care of our kids and we bought a puppy – which is a whole lot of work – and she's overloaded.
“Obviously. I'm resting and reading books and I played golf. I made a mistake answering a FaceTime call on the golf course the other day . ...
"... That phone call didn't last very long.”
The Korver children are between the ages of 3 and 7 and his wife, Juliet, has only two hands, so now she's outnumbered.
That means when one kid needs a Band-Aid, and possibly more first aid based on the crying, and another kid spilled milk all over the table and another kid is in a bedroom that doesn't belong to them taking toys that were not expressly granted prior approval, Dad and Mom used to be able to divide and manage the crisis together.
These days, it's up to her.
And now there's Roscoe Korver. “During the pandemic, people, families got dogs or trampolines; you get one or the other if you have kids, right?” said Korver during a video conference call with reporters Monday night. “We got both.”
Korver explained that a love for a stuffed animal turned into their family addition.
“My older boy, he's 5, Knox, he had a stuffy, a little stuffy, like this big (about a foot) that I had probably spent 100 hours of my life looking for before bedtime or before we'd get in the car,” Korver said.
“If we're going to get a dog, like, let's try and find Roscoe, right? So we found Roscoe, it looks just like the stuffy and it's been a big hit.
“But it's a lot of work.”
Now while the dog needs to be house trained and there are strong indications kids won't return to school in-person, the Korvers will have to get on while Kyle enjoys housekeeping service, chef-prepared meals and nights of uninterrupted sleep.
Families all over the league are going to have to deal with this.
But while Korver and the Bucks continue their pursuit of an NBA championship, he has adopted another role as well: that of supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement for social justice and the end to systemic racism.
About a month ago, he said he would wear Black Lives Matter on the back of his jersey, after the NBA announced it would allow players to swap out social messages for their last names in response protests and demonstrations over the past several months.
That's not where the movement ends, he hopes.
Korver said the NBA has created a culture where social responsibility is part of the job.
“There's been some kind of pushback on athletes that we need to separate, keep politics out of sports,” Korver said.
“There's been some push back on: Can what we put on the back of our jersey really create any change?
“But we do have a voice in culture, right? If you polled the youth, who they're listening to are entertainers and athletes.”
Korver said his NBA colleagues are educating themselves and connecting with others.
“You have a lot of African American players in this league who want to be about change, and they've inspired the rest of us to do the same,” Korver said.
To him, that means participating in as many conversations about racism as possible. It also means he views his role in the social awareness movement much like his role with the Bucks: provide support and a sense of perspective, with a willingness to share the responsibility.
“I'm very aware that we're not fighting for equality for white people,” Korver said. “And so I'm not trying to center myself in this.
“I'm trying to support my Black teammates and brothers in whatever way that I can. And if I can amplify, if I can stand with, if I can show solidarity in any way, that's what I'm going to do.”
The tragedies of the coronavirus, of the pandemic. The police brutality incidents. The stress and anxiety. The political arguments. It's awful that families have to be separated, with parents who have to go to work in quarantine during this time.
But at least Korver's kids will grow up one day knowing what their dad stood for.