2020 started out uncomfortably for NBA commissioner Adam Silver. Back in October 2019, three weeks before the beginning of the season, Daryl Morey, the former general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted an image that said “FIGHT FOR FREEDOM / STAND WITH HONG KONG” in support of protesters who were demonstrating against a bill that would allow extradition to China. The tweet ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world's most populous nation, which threatened a lucrative revenue stream for the league. As a rebuke of Morey, and to force the NBA to discipline him, Chinese state television stopped airing games for the duration of the regular season and well into the Finals.
But even that financial catastrophe paled in comparison with what happened on March 11, when it was revealed that Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert had contracted the coronavirus. Almost immediately, Silver halted on-court operations, and professional basketball did not return until four months later via an ambitious public health experiment that would be called the NBA bubble.
Adding to the precarity of the league's restart was that everything was happening against the backdrop of a historic civil rights movement. Two months before the season resumed, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis. The sights and sounds captured on video gave America pause like never before, spawning nationwide protests and a reckoning with racism that made sticking to sports impossible for leagues across the world.
The concerns were more acute for the NBA; players weren't even sure if returning to the court was a good idea. To top it all off, everything nearly fell apart again on August 26, after the Kenosha police shooting of Jacob Blake, once games were already under way inside the bubble. In response, the Milwaukee Bucks stayed in their locker room before Game 5 of their first-round playoff series against the Orlando Magic, effectively putting the league on pause.
At the center of the yearlong storm was Adam Silver, who spoke to GQ during the NBA Finals via FaceTime from his hotel room inside the bubble—which, against long odds, exceeded most expectations.
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GQ: Financially, how dire would the consequences have been if the season had to be canceled?
Adam Silver: I mean, I wouldn't use the word dire, only because I tend to look at our business over a longer-term horizon. Even though we had an opportunity, of course, to restart the season, the financial implications are still pretty traumatic. The players will still take a significant pay cut, and most of our teams will also lose significant amounts of money—not just from their NBA team but [also from their] arenas and all of those nights that have remained dark. Again, I'm trying to take a longer-term perspective and with a recognition that this too shall pass, whether it takes another six months for a vaccine to be widely distributed or it takes another year to get back up and running. Meanwhile, we're watching what's happening around the world. For example, we have Game 4 of the Finals taking place on Tuesday night in Orlando. So on Wednesday morning in Shanghai, in fact, there is a viewing party at an arena where they're going to have 5,000 fans, and they're comfortable doing that. They have protocols for doing that.
What were the bubble negotiations like with the players, as they were the ones who were going to have to bear the brunt of the isolation?
When we first began proposing playing in a bubble-type environment, I had many individual calls with players who were nervous, understandably, as to how safe that would even be. At that point, people were still sheltered at home. Part of it was the sense that the players were going to be dependent on the behavior of everyone else in the bubble community: players, staff, employees—anyone who was part of it. And they realized we were only going to be as safe as the least compliant participant.
So I think the players really did their homework, balancing economic issues with health and safety issues. We spent probably hundreds of hours on Zoom calls directly with players, helping them understand what the environment would be like in which they were playing, how they would be living.
Right.
Now, there wasn't complete confidence that [the bubble] would work. I should point out what makes it not quite the bubble people think it is, is that many of the workers…the vast majority of them do not live in the bubble. They live in the [surrounding] community. And as we know, the case rate went way up in Florida—almost the highest in the country. When we began operations here in early July, it was almost at the apex of cases in Florida, which almost caused us not to go forward, were it not for the confidence our experts had in the system we had set up and the long quarantine periods.
Some people think that the testing is what prevented the spread. But given that we've had zero cases, essentially what prevented the spread were the same practices that ultimately proved successful around the 1918 flu: physical distancing, quarantining, mask wearing, handwashing. There's nothing more high-tech than that at the end of the day, and that seemingly is what has proved to be effective here.
As you entered the bubble, how concerned were you with the mental health of players, given what an artificial habitat they were going to be in for months?
I was very concerned. And in fact, when you're down here in the bubble, there's an app. And you do a daily check-in and you answer questions about COVID symptoms. And the only other question, other than COVID symptoms, is: Would you like to speak to a mental health professional? So we asked the players that question every day, and obviously when they [want to speak with someone], it's confidential. All I know is, the overall use rate of the psychologists, on and off campus, has been fairly high.
I'm really encouraged, and I've said this many times, but thank you again to DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love,* because something that was completely unacceptable a few years ago in the league is now part [of it]. Players think of it like they would going to a shooting coach.
*In 2018, DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love publicly detailed their respective struggles with depression and have since become outspoken advocates for mental health.
I think if I had to [pinpoint] the single biggest issue for players, it's been the separation from their children. I think what they're feeling is some sense of guilt: Are they putting themselves above their families by being here? Are they putting themselves above their community on social justice [issues] by being here? And again, I don't want to just think about the players. We also had hundreds of team personnel and coaches, many of whom also have young children. And as tough as it is for people to be away from other family members, I think adult relationships are very different. The real hardship has been the separation from kids, who may not understand [what's going on]. When we had a reduced number of teams and the families could bring their children onto the campus, I think that made a big difference.
Was there anything in planning the bubble that proved to be more difficult than you expected? Not even something that's major in terms of the health and safety protocols, more like you get to the end and you figure out, “Wait, we have to have a barbershop.”
There were a lot of discussions about the food early on—putting aside the taste—that the vegetables weren't organic. That was something we were focused on. Finding other suppliers of the food inside the bubble. We did plan for the barbershop, and I think we were surprised by the amount of grooming of our players who frequented the barbershop. But I think one thing we hadn't planned sufficiently for was the amount of package deliveries. At the height of the campus operation, with 22 teams, we were getting over a thousand packages a day. I mean, everything from books, on one end of the spectrum, to exercise bicycles and gym equipment that guys wanted in their room. We had to set up an entire warehouse facility on campus to handle just the enormous load of delivery trucks.
What was the process like for the league in determining how it would respond to the killing of George Floyd?
I think there was a lot of self-examination from the players and the teams as to whether to even move ahead, whether this all made sense, given what was happening in the country post-George Floyd's killing.
And the discussion was a very open one, between the teams and the league and the players union: Would players have a stronger voice if they're on campus or off campus? And then, on the other side of the coin, there was discussion about, well, if we are going to restart the season and we are going to be in the bubble, what can we do collectively to draw attention to these issues rather than just play games? I think it was then that the Players Association proposed to the league that we, for example, include the social justice messages on the jerseys or something. We ended up putting “Black Lives Matter” on the playing floor and finding other ways systematically to focus attention on these issues, rather than leaving them to the individual players. And I think ultimately the conclusion was that the unified voice of the players on campus would be more powerful. That together here in the bubble, they could use their platform to have a voice in the conversation.
How comfortable were the team owners* with engaging in what some might consider to be a political stance? Particularly on the floor. Before this, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” was considered a controversial statement. By the time the bubble had opened, a majority of Americans supported it.
I think they wanted to support the players. I think this was regardless of their individual support for the movement. I shared many of those views that players have, but where do you draw the line? And once you move into what undoubtedly many will perceive as a political issue, what will be the impact on our fan base?
*According to a September report from The Ringer, only seven owners of NBA teams are not white. And during the 2020 election cycle, outside of Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s contributions to a gun-control organization, 80.9 percent of political donations from NBA team owners have gone to Republican causes.
I think we ultimately understood that in an election cycle in the current environment, virtually anything we did would be viewed through a political lens. I mean, if mask wearing is viewed as political, certainly Black Lives Matter as a movement would be viewed as political. Having said that, and putting aside the precise expression of it, whether it said “end racism” on our floor or “Black Lives Matter,” I kept reminding myself of the bedrock principles underlying this league. Those values that have been in place long before me, and long before most of the governors in this league. And that is a support of racial equality and social justice. Have we been perfect on these issues? Of course not. But it's been a bedrock principle, just like it is for this country, and the country's been far from perfect on it.
The ongoing discussion with players has been: What is the best way to effect change? Now, I recognize that making people uncomfortable isn't inconsistent with making a change. But disenfranchising them potentially is, and discerning between the two is hard. And it may take some reflection after the season ends to better understand how people reacted to us, and in what cases. If we had not done certain things, would we have been responding to people who honestly weren't fans of the league to begin with, as opposed to engaging those people who are our fans?
The cofounder of Nike, Phil Knight, came and spoke to our 30 teams two years ago. Someone asked him for marketing advice. And he said, “It's very simple. Focus on the people who like you, not the people who don't like you.”
Right.
I know that many of our core fans were far from tuning us out—they became more engaged in the league as a result of these messages. We're proud of our players for taking the position, and not just on Black Lives Matter but for becoming more engaged civically. I mean, [National Basketball Players Association president] Chris Paul announced just earlier this week that 90 percent of eligible NBA players were now registered to vote. We've converted much of our messaging directly to civic engagement under the notion that protest is great, but it has to be paired with action.
Your predecessor, David Stern, particularly early in his tenure, had to fight the idea that the NBA was “the Black league.” And that has affected the way the NBA has done some things. But now it sounds like there are some people that you have decided that you're not going to be able to win over and that it's no longer a primary fight of the NBA in terms of the messaging and promotion of the league.
It's interesting that you raise that issue with regard to David, because even when I got to the league, in the early '90s, that was still an issue. And in the same way that I think anybody would have been naive to think we were post-racial, of course those issues have never gone away. I wouldn't say that our goal still isn't to win those fans over; of course, my goal is to win everybody over. And part of winning them over is to listen to them and to maybe engage with them so they better understand our perspective.
I'd say part of the issue with Black Lives Matter was that we were subject to how others chose to interpret that movement. And I could bang the table all day long and say, “No, our support of Black Lives Matter, that is a social justice movement in which 25 million people took to the streets in the United States to support.” Yet others have chosen to label Black Lives Matter as an anti-American Marxist organization. And I recognize because that's written on our floor, we have to own that point of view as well.
I only say that because long before there was even a movement called Black Lives Matter, there was the NBA. There was Bill Russell, there was Oscar Robertson and Wayne Embry and Lenny Wilkens and all these great Black leaders within the league. Part of what I'm focusing on is finding our own voice for next season and putting us in a leadership position on these issues, and—maybe I'm naive to say this—putting us in a role to unify people as well.
Now, some people might suggest that the words Black Lives Matter are causing massive amounts of people to tune out the NBA. There's absolutely no data to support that. And in fact, as I said, there's no doubt there are some people—and whether or not they were truly our fans to begin with is unclear—who have become further engaged with the league because they believe in our players and they believe in the positions they've taken, even if they don't agree with everything they say. They respect their right to speak out on issues that are important to them.
Taylor Rooks spent months inside the bubble in Orlando, Florida—the temporary home of the world's greatest basketball players.
On August 26, when the Bucks announced that they wouldn't be playing, how wobbly did the bubble begin to feel?
I mean, some people referred to it as a boycott, but to me it was a work stoppage. It was generally, I think, a pause in terms of players trying to decide whether to keep going. I think of a boycott as something directed at economic leverage at the league. It wasn't so much about the management of the league; it was just like, “Should we go on?”
We had that discussion with a group of governors. Michael Jordan, as the chairman of the labor relations committee, led that meeting. Out of that meeting, we collectively agreed we would redouble our efforts to convert our arenas into polling places. Although we had agreed early in the summer to create a foundation, a partnership between the teams and the players, seeded with $300 million of capital from the team owners and dedicated to economic empowerment, there was a sense from the players that we needed another platform. You know, our voices are being heard, but how do we effect change? And what we decided was, let's create what we're calling the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition, which is an organization of owners and players that can effect legislative change. In some ways, we became closer as a result of that work stoppage and at least then we had a course of action. For the players it was: “All right, we now have a new organization that can focus specifically on these issues.”
How would you respond to those who struggle to reconcile these established values that the NBA represents and the business relationship that the league has with China?
I think they're very different. I don't think it should be a surprise to people that in a league that is 80 percent Black, that issues of social justice are the issues that they choose to speak out on. To me, that's the essence of what free speech is. Free speech is your decision as to what to speak out on and where to focus your attention.
And through the relationships that we have in China—directly with the hundreds of millions of people in China that follow NBA basketball—we are an exporter of American values. And again, I'm not naive. I don't mean to suggest that therefore their system of government will change because people watch NBA basketball. But I think through those relationships come commonality of interest and ultimately empathy and a better understanding of each other. I don't know how else to say it, but I think it's a net positive, because the alternative is disengagement.
But I guess that people could say, “Well, it's inconsistent with our values.” And I'd say, “Do you make decisions based on one issue?” I still believe that by engaging with people in China, by exporting what is a piece of Americana through the NBA, that we are supporting our fundamental values and that the alternative of not doing it would not improve things.
Now, I think there's been a misinterpretation around the Daryl Morey tweet, and it confuses me in terms of people's reactions.* Our response was “No, we support freedom of expression.” That is a bedrock American principle, and that if they choose to not air our games as a result of that tweet, we accept the consequences. Hopefully, the Chinese will see that.
*After fierce blowback from Chinese fans, Morey seemed to walk back his original tweet, and American politicians, both Democrat and Republican, criticized the NBA for seemingly conceding to denunciations from China.
And it's no surprise: We have a different system, and that's what we believe in. It's two governments having disagreements.
Where does the relationship between the NBA and the Chinese government stand now?
We don't have a direct relationship with the government. Our games continue to be distributed on what is a private streaming service there called Tencent. But I think that taking our games [temporarily] off China Central Television has sent a very clear signal to Chinese citizens from the Chinese government that we are being disfavored at this time. And we are continuing to do what we do. And certainly, for Chinese citizens who watch our games, whatever messages are on our floor, whatever messages are on our jerseys, are seen by them. And certainly our players who choose to speak out on the issues important to them, whatever those issues are, will be heard around the world.
I believe that over time, the Chinese will recognize that this kind of engagement is in their interest as well. I believe in diplomacy. That we have to learn to coexist. And it doesn't mean, by any measure, that we are endorsing particular practices in China. Far from it. But it's a recognition that we're all human beings, and sports creates commonality. And we have to learn to live with each other.
Bomani Jones is the host of the ESPN podcast ‘The Right Time With Bomani Jones.’
A version of this story originally appears in the December/January 2021 issue with the title "The Bubble Builder."