Are We Really Gonna Do This?

Obstacles be damned, it looks like NBA Disney is going to happen.

[Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images]

Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard. 

Andrew's writing is brought to you by Kinetic Skateboarding! Not only the Ricky's approved skate shop, but the best place to get Chucks, Vans, any apparel. Use code "DAVESILVER" for 9.1% off your order.

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There are few experiences more stressful than throwing a party that you realize halfway through planning was a bad idea. The location is inconvenient, the setup is gonna be a hassle, you’re not sure who’s even definitely coming, and even in a best-case scenario you’re increasingly unconvinced the whole thing is worth the effort. Now it’s just a couple weeks out and you’re frantically scrambling to put the best face on an occasion that no one, including you, is all that excited about attending -- and left wondering if it’s not too late for you to pull the plug on it altogether. 

A couple months ago, if you had asked me if there were any circumstances under which the NBA’s Florida return would cause me more dread than excitement, I would’ve said no way, Josuélito. Sixers still maddeningly inconsistent? Worth it just to see Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons play again. Jo and Ben out with injury? More minutes for Shake Milton and Furkan Korkmaz. Ownership showing their ass again? Whatever, we’ll chant “SELL! THE! TEAM!” as Josh Harris raises the Larry O’B. Asterisk title? Every title is an asterisk title for one reason or another. Freaky ass season feels more like Orlando Summer League than the proper NBA Playoffs? Who says the latter is more important, anyway? Really, none of this really would’ve mattered to me in the face of getting to watch Our Sixers again.

But now, I’m starting to get that feeling of having a birthday coming up where the bar’s reserved for a 15-person minimum and there’s only have five confirmed Yeses on Facebook. Some players -- mostly vets not likely to factor in the real playoff race, but at least one rotation guy on a finals contender -- are already starting to thanks-but-no-thanks the season’s return, and they probably won’t be the only ones. Other leagues are already way ahead of them: In the WNBA, key members of both of last year’s finals teams have decided to take a pass on the whole season, and in one women’s pro softball league, an entire team already quit on the whole season in an act of protest and solidarity. More and more players are gonna weigh the variables of the invitation here and realize they’re probably better off just staying at home this particular Saturday night. 

One international crisis was hard enough to shrug off in the efforts to resume throwing an orange ball into a hollow cylinder; two is a tough ask -- Especially when neither of them seem likely to stop festering anytime soon. COVID-19 cases are of course spiking again (with particular focus on the Sunshine State), while every day brings new fire-stoking headlines of police violence, racial strife and justice unserved. Not only do we have little reason to believe things will be less volatile by the time the NBA is supposed to start in late July, we’d probably be naive not to assume that they’ll be even worse. 

While the time-honored tradition of sports is to provide a distraction from whatever else is going on outside the lines -- this would hardly be the first example of sports being played when Things Were Bad -- this proposed NBA return would have the unique risk of potentially being actively harmful to both causes. Few sports are as inherently un-socially distanced as basketball; players could be putting themselves, their teammates and families, and the entire cast of Frozen at risk by tasting each other’s sweat for 48 minutes a night in the midst of a pandemic. Testing will be widely available but likely still imperfect; one false negative and the entire league could be back at square one. 

And as several players have already been vocal about fearing, by playing they could give America an inferred (if not actually implied) vision of societal normalcy, of many of the country’s most powerful, influential and outspoken Black celebrities shutting up and dribbling, at least in the eyes of those critics watching. You can say all you want about the benefits of these players using their platform to spread their message, and that’s all fair. But it doesn’t change the fact that no message they could plaster onto court sidelines, inject into pre-game announcements and halftime shows, or even emblazon onto their own uniforms and/or bodies, could ever be as profound and impactful a statement as simply not playing at all. Distracting from society’s problems is no longer a noble pursuit following months of protests whose entire purpose was to force society to take a long, hard look at ills that it had too long turned a blind eye towards. 

The biggest problem for the NBA here isn’t the prospect of its most premium product being diluted by some of the best players not showing. No, the real risk here is the breaking of the most crucial social contract in sports: that for as long as the game is going, both everyone playing and everyone watching agrees that it is the most important thing in the world. The whole thing about basketball is that for 2-3 hours, it doesn’t matter what else is happening around the globe: a game is underway, and the headlines start and end with that. That’s all sports is, really -- a universal agreement to project true emotional stakes onto a series of contests that otherwise have no inherent real-world consequences for anyone involved. Without that base understanding underriding everything, professional athletics would be about as meaningful to us fans as it is to those folks who still wear “SPORTSBALL” t-shirts.

Charles Barkley thinks that nobody wants to play the Sixers, which would make sense if he's not watched them at all this year. We discuss Barkley's comments, Joel Embiid and Josh Richardson wanting a place to go play soccer, a theory about the Astros cheating that angers Mike, the release of Mike's Brotherly Love Script, and our dads in a reality show.

Can basketball still feel that crucial when it’s played amidst constant reminders of much more pressing concerns? If the first playoff game between the Lakers and Blazers features a combined six rotation players between the teams who are staying at home to be safe and/or sitting out as conscientious objectors, are we really going to care enough to keep watching? If Kawhi Leonard is ruled out in the second round after testing COVID-positive, can we really shrug it off as “Well, injuries are part of the game,” like he’d pulled a hamstring? If we’re watching a close game at home and scroll past a conservative pundit tweeting about how glad they are to be watching these athletes playing in Game Six rather than burning and looting out in the streets, are we all gonna feel like complicit sellouts just for tuning in? 

Of course, the answers to all these reasonable questions might not roll up into the logical answer to the much larger question of whether we should just cancel the party altogether. As many (including Spike) have pointed out, we’re already largely past the point of no return here: Untold millions of dollars are being poured into the season’s reboot, and once that train leaves the station it takes a lot more than just common sense and good taste to stop it. Positive COVID tests have already begun to spring up around the NBA, but no one’s rushing to center court to call the whole thing off this time -- and no matter what the public response, the NBA’s course of action is most likely gonna be a really big I Pretend I Do Not See It meme until something truly (and perhaps tragically) unignorable happens. 

Maybe it’s all a moot point anyway. Maybe the combination of an isolated campus, constant testing and the best medical resources money can be are enough to keep our guys safe for the couple months this thing is gonna take. Maybe the players find a way to use their national platform in a productive enough way that the league’s resumption feels like an amplification, not a distraction. Or maybe we watch Joel Embiid swat a Jayson Tatum jumper all the way to It’s a Small World and suddenly we all can convince ourselves that sports is the most important thing in the world again. 

The NBA better hope so, because it might be hard to unring that bell of basketball being the sport that forced a season that put its players at risk and turned activists back into entertainers, just so it could have a compromised playoffs that only reminded us how silly all of this really is. If so, who knows how many of us are even gonna want to show up to the party again next year?