Sai Kulkarni ‘23
Staff Editor
In a year that began with the tragic loss of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, fans of every NBA franchise (except perhaps the Heat) can agree that it seems poetic that LeBron and Anthony Davis (AD) led the Lakers to clinch a championship, the seventeenth for the franchise. This season was mired with another tragedy, however, one we are all familiar with: the coronavirus. The season stopped abruptly and resumed months later with stringent precautions for the support staff, players, and management. They lived within a “bubble” in Disney World, Orlando. A place that I recommend everyone visit once the pandemic has passed, since your ticket fees pay into the state’s education fund. Have fun and do a public service on the side.
Anyway, the real attraction, in my eyes, is how effective the league’s precautions turned out to be. Not a single player, coach, or staff member tested positive for COVID-19. With cases beginning to surge again in the Midwest and nationwide, it’s time to take a deep dive into the procedures Adam Silver and the NBA implemented to see if there are any lessons for someone[1] to learn in handling this pandemic. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: No state or local government can completely control its residents’ movements to the degree that the League did. But the League’s three most basic strategies are ones that scientists have recommended to us all. Wearing masks and social distancing were required of everyone. Anyone who left the bubble was told to quarantine for ten days.
Pictured: Adam Silver showed how the NBA could thrive and showcase its talent from a 'bubble' during COVID-19. Photo Courtesy of sporting news.com
The League invested in proximity alarms that would alert their wearers when two people in the bubble got within six feet of one another. They added rings that tested for heart rate and temperature. Part of this was the huge financial investment the NBA could make, while the other was the NBA’s ability to exercise complete control over everyone in the bubble. Unlike other sports leagues like the MLB and the NFL, the NBA used their funds to invest in the safety and security of their players. What a unique idea: protecting the people an organization is responsible for!
Now for the fanciest stuff: testing. I’m sorry, did I say fanciest? I meant bare minimum. The NBA invested in resources that let it test players and staff regularly. With periodic testing, they were able to ensure that their other, actually fancy, efforts worked. According to epidemiologists at Cornell, the aggressive testing strategy was part of the complete control that led to the efficacy of the program.[2] The general public doesn’t have access to a similar aggressive testing program. But with a large-scale government investment, especially at the federal level, this might be something we could implement. I wonder if there is someone I could direct these recommendations to?
Of course, the NBA leadership did not directly create any of these plans by themselves. But they had the unique idea of listening to scientists to design a plan to protect their players. They went a step further than comparable sports leagues and considered the health and well-being of their staff. The staff members quarantined before the season began and were housed in the same bubble as players. The entire ecosystem was built on testing and contact tracing. Now, dear reader, you may be thinking to yourself that this seems like the ideal environment to do a scientific study on prevention and testing measures. Well, it seems that teams of researchers at Yale agree with you. The NBA provided an environment to try out a new test for COVID-19.
These researchers tested out a new brand called SalivaDirect, which they found had 99.7 percent validity with minimal false positives. The two major benefits for the world are that these tests are easier to mass produce and less invasive than existing tests.[3] I still remember the pain of the nasal swab from the more invasive test and just the thought of an easier test soothes me. The bubble provided the ideal environment for this kind of scientific study, with more study results on the way. The lessons we gained from the simple existence of the NBA bubble will likely have positive externalities we have yet to foresee.
This brings me to my main point and the title of this article. Adam Silver is no scientist. He is no politician. This entire experiment was built by the efforts of ordinary staff members and a team of researchers, epidemiologists, and healthcare workers. I am guessing that Mr. Silver had nothing to do with the plan other than to see what was proposed, look at the financials, and greenlight the idea. But I think that is exactly the kind of leadership we need in this pandemic. Someone who is willing to make large scale investments knowing that the returns in the economy will be worth it. Someone who can listen to scientists and simply go out there and sell the idea to the public and to the people he is responsible for. Thus, I nominate Adam Silver to sit there, listen, and greenlight the ideas of the actual scientists on the coronavirus task force.
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omk6cg@virginia.edu
[1] I’m looking at you, Mike Pence.
[2] Baggaley, K., “The NBA bubble was a one-of-a-kind COVID-19 success story,” Popular Science (2020).https://www.popsci.com/story/health/nba-coronavirus-bubble-success-science/
[3] Ogbunu, C., “How the NBA conquered COVID-19" (2020) https://theundefeated.com/features/how-the-nba-conquered-covid-19/