The NBA Bubble: An Incredible Feat for Basketball

When the National Basketball Association (NBA) decided to postpone the remainder of the 2019-2020 regular season last March, everyone was stunned. Everyone was in disbelief. Back then, there was no clear timetable as to when the NBA would be back or would it even be back this year. 

Fortunately, the NBA did come back last July and the regular season was shortened with 22 teams playing eight seeding games each inside a bubble in Orlando. Then the playoffs. Then, the Los Angeles Lakers won it all. All of that ran successfully despite the pandemic and the social injustices that were rocking the United States at that time. 

On the final episode of Jump Thru Hoops for 2020, Jinno Rufino and Aaron Atayde looked back at 2020 in the eyes of basketball fans and that, the NBA bubble inside the house of Mickey Mouse in Orlando was something that the entire world kept an eye on to. As Atayde called it, the NBA bubble was "an incredible feat that Adam Silver was able to accomplish," referring to how NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was able to make the Orlando bubble work. 

"They still found a way to bring basketball to the fans. Thinking about how went from being (in a) lockdown to being in a bubble, it really was a stroke of genius and an incredible amount of effort to get this done," Atayde continued.

While he complained about the NBA bringing in some teams whom he thought were troublemakers, Jinno Rufino praised how the NBA bubble worked. "The quality of the games was still good. The presentation of the games was excellent,"

More than bringing back basketball to the fans, Rufino pointed out the importance of the NBA bubble succeeding. "It was so important not just for sports and for the NBA for this to succeed because we've seen that other facets of life have followed the same model to be able to continue with their businesses. They followed the same model that of the NBA's,"

The result of the success of the NBA bubble: other leagues held their own bubbles and as Atayde said, "It was all tailored after what Adam Silver did,"

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