It feels like a lifetime since teams were sequestered at Walt Disney World Resort during the COVID-19 pandemic. The NBA bubble happened just five years ago, though. LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Los Angeles Lakers emerged from the grueling ordeal to win the title, but it’s easy to forget that the season very nearly wasn’t completed at all, not only due to the coronavirus but also in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
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On August 23, 2020, Blake was shot seven times by Kenosha, Wisconsin, police. The Black Lives Matter movement had been kicked into overdrive by the earlier killing of George Floyd, and Blake’s shooting, which left him paralyzed from the waist down, brought racial tensions to a boiling point.
In response to Blake’s shooting, the Milwaukee Bucks boycotted their playoff game with the Orlando Magic a few days later. This was a reckoning moment for the league, and during this time, it was truly unknown whether the season would continue or not.
Chris Paul was the National Basketball Players Association president from 2013-21, so he served an important role when civil unrest reached the bubble. In an interview with Spolitics podcast host Jemele Hill at the American Black Film Festival this past weekend, he described the uncertainty around that time.
“Very close,” Paul replied when asked how close the players were to not resuming the season. He was on the bus on the way to play the Rockets when news of the Bucks’ boycott spread, and his phone began to blow up. “I’m not now a player getting ready to play a game,” Paul recalled.
“My phone rung, and it’s Damian Lillard. ‘Yo C, what we doin’?’ [LeBron James] called. Adam Silver called. So now I gotta figure out and navigate what we’re gonna do. We canceled that game. Now I have to call the lady that was running the property for us and get 100-something chairs put in a ballroom so that we can meet and talk about what we’re gonna do.”
Paul also spoke to Jacob Blake’s dad, and after a long and contentious meeting, the decision was eventually made that the season would continue.
In November of 2020, just a few months after that meeting, the NBA and NBPA established the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition, an initiative undertaken with the goal of educating and advocating for meaningful reform. Every team took an active part in the 2020 election, with many lending their arenas as polling sites to encourage higher turnout.
NBA players have continued to use their platform in the years since to advocate for a better world, both collectively and through their individual foundations and charitable works.
