The NBA makes the mundane exciting – The Globe and Mail

Generally speaking, there is an orderly way storylines develop during a sports training camp:

First, talk about the new guys.

Second, talk about the old guys.

Third, how are all these guys feeling?

Fourth, what’s up with that guy?

Fifth, the new guy is hurt already.

Sixth, these guys are(n’t) ready to go (as the case may be).

Then the season gets under way. This tedious tradition exists because, seriously, what else can you talk about when they aren’t playing actual games?

This is one of the things the pandemic bubble has turned on its head. All of a sudden, training camp is interesting. Everybody wants to know what it’s like to enter the Athletic Biosphere. What’s the food like? Who’s in there? What do you do all day?

“I’ve just been really chillin’. Taking this time to rest my body,” Raptors swingman Patrick McCaw said on Wednesday. “You got a lot of free time outside of practice. There’s little things you can do. You can fish.”

These interviews are being beamed in by what appears to be Soviet-era technology, so it can sometimes be hard to understand what’s being said. So did McCaw say “fish”? As in, with a pole?

Yes, fish.

Turns out there’s a whole online sub-genre dedicated to watching NBA players fish off a dock in Disney World.

Houston Rockets guard Patrick Beverley is taking fishing lessons with L.A. Clippers’ forward Montrezl Harrell. In a hotel hallway. Beverley posted a video of said introduction to rod technology.

“See this part right here?” Harrell says. “When you flip this over, instantly the line’s going to drop.”

Beverley does not look convinced.

If fishing isn’t your thing, how about lurid assignations? Everyone likes those. Harrell got pulled into an online storm involving an Instagram model and her apparent invitation (quickly rescinded) into the NBA bubble by an, ahem, unidentified friend.

Someone wildly speculated that Harrell was the friend, prompting a sleepy social-media denial from Harrell: “Why the hell I wake up from a nap and everyone accusing Trezz of something.”

You’ll notice that that’s not exactly a denial.

Oh, those scamps in the NBA, with their fishing and their friends.

And did you hear the one where Phoenix’s Kelly Oubre sent out a heads-up letting his colleagues know that you could order takeout into the bubble? Because you most definitely can’t do that. Takeout turns a nice, smooth bubble into an epidemiological wiffle ball.

Oubre’s bad advice prompted a Sacramento King to do the very thing, which in turn got him yanked back into full lockdown for two weeks, which in turn prompted his mother to gently berate him on Twitter: “You only cross the line for your Momma’s cooking! And I was not in Florida, sir!!”

There are dozens of more soap-opera sub-plots coming out of basketball lockdown, all them offered up freely by the stars of the show.

So far, the NBA bubble isn’t just working. It’s created a new content stream for the league. This is the hottest new reality show on television, only it’s not on television and it produces itself.

At this rate, it’s possible the NBA bubble will turn out to be more fun to watch than the NBA season.

This is where the NBA separates itself from its peers. Basketball players seem to instinctively understand that their role as entertainers doesn’t end once they step outside the lines of play.

This is why the NBA is a global marketing jackpot, while the NHL spends a lot of time wondering why no one in China loves it.

That willingness to embrace celebrity was always important to the NBA’s success, but has never been moreso.

Most of us continue to operate under the assumption that this new way of living is a blip. It may be a six-month blip or a year-long blip, but a blip nonetheless.

What if it’s not a blip? What if this is just the way we live from now on?

The sports business is the least of our worries, but the game has a function. Its greatest social utility is reminding pandemic agnostics that things are not getting back to normal. If pros used to getting anything they want can’t get takeout, you may also find some interruption to your normal life service. Regular programming may or may not resume shortly.

Sports started this for a lot of us and it will end it. When fans are in arenas again, this will be over.

As the NBA’s bubble experiment was launched, Raptors president Masai Ujiri said he expected it to be a weird one-off.

“Next season will be played with fans,” Ujiri said. “We’ll get through this by the grace of God. I’m one of the optimistic ones.”

I’m not. There is nothing to suggest this will be over by Dec. 1 (the proposed start date of the 2020-21 NBA campaign). Or June 1. Or the next Dec. 1.

We can wish that happens, but no one with an authoritative viewpoint has given anything but vague, transparently morale-boosting deadlines designed to calm the masses.

If so, bubble life is the NBA (and NHL) for the foreseeable future.

For now, that seems like fun, in an overnight-camp sort of way. NBA players are making what must be a drag – living forever in a chain hotel – look like grown-up Hogwarts. I suppose the insane amounts of money they make must help in this regard.

But we should not underestimate how soothing that example may prove to be if we’re headed back into lockdown. If they can manage it, so can the rest of us. At least, that’s the theory.

Meanwhile, the NBA finds itself gifted a low-cost, high-visibility marketing campaign. It is the make-your-own-fun league, the fishing-off-the-dock league.

The NHL ought to take notes. You’re probably not going to change hockey’s ‘fun=dangerous-displays-of-individualism’ ethos in the space of a few weeks, but for its own sake, the league might want to try.

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