Bio-secure bubble presents unprecedented challenges for NBA

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The team buses of the NBA champions Toronto Raptors basketball team, with Black Lives Matter displayed on the sides, arrive at the Walt Disney World complex outside Orlando, Florida, U.S. July 9, 2020. Toronto Raptors/Handout via REUTERS

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – An NBA season like no other resumes inside a bio-secure bubble in Orlando this week, following a four-and-a-half month break, in what will probably be the most uniquely challenging title run in the 74-year history of the league.

Bringing home the Larry O’Brien trophy in October will require a level of mental toughness never seen before. Players have to stay away from their families for three months, play in front of empty stands and also subject themselves to regular COVID-19 tests.

“We are in uncharted waters,” Hall of Famer Reggie Miller said on Tuesday.

“Twenty two teams in a bubble, isolated on a campus, in a dorm living together in the middle of a pandemic. We’ve got civil unrest in our country and players have left their families at home.

“Whoever wins this championship, with everything that’s going on in the world, they will have wanted it.”

Miller, who will be calling games for broadcaster TNT, said he had only been at the Orlando campus for three days and was already “going crazy.”

Some players have even likened their stay at the Walt Disney World Resort to being in jail.

“Just left the crib to head to the bubble … felt like I’m headed to do a bid man!” Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James said on Twitter earlier this month, using a slang term to compare the stint in Florida to a prison sentence.

Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, an MVP candidate in search of his first championship, added: “This is going be the toughest championship you could ever win because circumstances are really, really tough.”

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