What life is like for reporters in NBA bubble. And former Hurricanes stars get TV gigs.
Being both isolated, but also simultaneously positioned in the epicenter of the sports world, seems like a contradiction.
But that’s the peculiar predicament that 15 or so NBA journalists find themselves as members of a select group that get the privilege of chronicling what promises to be the most unusual completion of an NBA season in history.
The NBA is permitting only those writers to get anywhere near players or coaches during the NBA’s re-start in Lake Buena Vista. They can attend the press conferences after games and media access after practices, and some will remain on the Disney Wide World of Sports complex for the duration of the season.
But it comes with a heavy price. The reporters credentialed for the NBA’s bubble (they’re identified as Group 1 reporters) were required to quarantine for seven days before arriving at Disney and must quarantine for another seven after arriving.
Financially, the outlet for each of those bubble reporters must pay $550 per day, covering their room, food and regular COVID tests. But The Athletic’s Joe Vardon, one of the bubble reporters, told readers this weekend: “Here’s a little secret -- we haven’t paid anything, yet. There has only been agreements between the NBA and our companies on the price.”
So what’s it like inside?
“You just have to stay busy,” the Associated Press’ Miami-based national NBA reporter, Tim Reynolds, told me. “Luckily, there’s 22 teams here and that’s a lot of Zoom calls to fill up the day.”
The weirdest part?
“How the food is dropped off on the floor outside the door three times a day,” Reynolds said. “Because that’s one of the only glimpses you get of the outside world. Our doors open to the outside, but we can’t go out there until Sunday.”
And Reynolds said it was “very weird to be at Disney for the Inter Miami-Philadelphia match [on Wednesday] and not only not be able to go, but have no idea where it even was, although it was probably no more than a quarter-mile away from where I am.”
Reynolds, who shared more of his experiences and insights with my Miami Herald colleagues Anthony Chiang and David Wilson on our Heat podcast, will see these other reporters when he’s allowed to leave his room on Sunday:
ESPN’s Malika Andrews (the first reporter in the bubble), Rachel Nichols and Marc Spears; Yahoo and Turner Sports reporter Chris Haynes; The New York Times’ Marc Stein; Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix; The Athletic’s Vardon, the Los Angeles Times’ Tania Ganguli; The Washington Post’s Ben Golliver; Dallas Morning News reporter Brad Townsend; Bleacher Report’s Taylor Rooks; the Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn; the Orange County Register’s Kyle Goon and USA Today’s Mark Medina.
Some of these reporters will be replaced by colleagues after several weeks. The NBA has said outlets who replace their reporters will be charged an additional fee.
Stein explained the bubble life thusly in the New York Times:
“According to the rules in the NBA corner of Disney World, no one is allowed inside the 314-square-foot room I am restricted to through Sunday. So I slid a chair up to the doorway to receive a swab of each nostril and my throat. The sticks were snapped and placed in a tube, then stored in a crate to take back to the lab. The swabs, roughly five hours after I checked in, took less than a minute. I took my second coronavirus test Monday night, nearly 24 hours later, even before I had a result confirmed from the first.
“But the end goal remains unchanged: I need a week’s worth of negative results from daily tests to gain full entry into what everyone refers to as the N.B.A. bubble — even though league officials, as Commissioner Adam Silver put it last week, acknowledge that it is better described as a campus because it is by no means “hermetically sealed.”
Andrews told ESPN colleague Mina Kimes, on Kimes’ podcast, that “when I go to get coffee in the morning, I often times see players grabbing some coffee or muffins and we’ll chat about the food that morning or how their workout was the day before. You run into players all the time. I’ve never just turned a corner down the hallway before and said ‘Oh, there’s LeBron’ or ‘Oh, there’s Giannis.’ That happens all the time here.”
The Group 1 reporters don’t have anything close to unlimited access. For example, they’re not permitted to approach players or coaches in the hallways or campus grounds for interviews.
NBA reporters who are not residing in the bubble will be allowed to attend the games but must pay $280 weekly for two COVID tests and are not permitted to attend press conferences at games or at practice. Those reporters will get access to coaches and players the same way media members at home will -- through Zoom sessions on their computer.
ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski was expected to join Andrews, Nichols and Spears inside the bubble, but that was scuttled after he was suspended for emailing a vulgarity to a U.S. Senator.
If you missed it (this is our first media column since this happened), Wojnarowski on July 10 responded to an email sent by Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley to several journalists. Hawley criticized the NBA for “kowtowing to Beijing” and its decision to allow players to wear social justice messages on their jerseys when the NBA resumes its season.
Wojnarowski responded with “[expletive] you” to the email and was subsequently suspended for two weeks. He hasn’t tweeted since, beyond a tweeted apology saying he “made a regrettable mistake” and was “disrespectful.” ESPN called him behavior “inexcusable.”
MEDIA NOTES
▪ ESPN’s Hubie Brown, 86, is joining TNT’s Marv Albert, 79, as the most famous network broadcasters who won’t be announcing the NBA’s re-start. TNT and ESPN are having their announcers call the games from the arenas at Disney, and the decision was made that Brown and Albert wouldn’t go because older demographic groups are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.
“We had to carefully consider what made sense for our overall commentator lineup given how mindful we are of the unique on-site circumstances and the unprecedented environment we all find ourselves in,” ESPN said.
The network remains committed to Brown, who was ESPN-TV’s No. 2 game analyst and also typically works the conference finals and NBA Finals on ESPN Radio. Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson and Doris Burke are expected to be the ABC/ESPN game analysts in Disney.
The ABC/ESPN and Turner game analysts won’t be part of the aforementioned Group 1 and thus won’t be required to quarantine.
Another familiar name opting out of broadcasting this summer: St. Louis Cardinals television analyst Tim McCarver, the longtime former lead MLB analyst on CBS and later Fox, told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that he has decided not to travel from Florida to do Cardinals telecasts for Fox Sports Midwest, even though the travel would be to St. Louis for every game.
McCarver, 78, said: “My doctor obviously had an input in this. He recommended that I not work because of the travel and because of the obvious things.” He was going to do 30 games if there had been a full season.
▪ Mike Golic, who is being replaced on ESPN Radio’s morning show after a 22-year run, told listeners that he will be a college football analyst for the network.
“I did college games starting in 1995 for ESPN,” he said. “I did it for 10 years until Mike, my oldest, went to high school. I said I wanted to see all my kids in their high school activities, high school and college, so I stopped doing college games at that point. …
“I always loved doing college games, so I asked ESPN for this season, and maybe beyond, we’ll see, if I can continue to call college games.”
He added that he also will make appearances on “SportsCenter” and “College Football Live.”
“That is what I’m going to do for the rest of this year, and hopefully beyond for a couple more years,” he said.
Zubin Mehenti, Jay Williams and Keyshawn Johnson are replacing Golic and Trey Wingo on ESPN Radio’s morning show beginning on Aug. 17.
“I would have loved to have kept going,” Golic said. “This is kind of like when I got cut from the Oilers and the Dolphins. I still want to do something, and management didn’t want me to do it anymore. That’s the way it is.”
▪ Seattle Seahawks and former UM tight end Greg Olsen will become Fox’s No. 2 NFL game analyst when he retires. Olsen plans to play this season. Daryl Johnston will hold down that role this season, with play-by-play man Kevin Burkhardt.
We’re told that former UM and NFL linebacker Jon Vilma - who left ESPN’s college football studio to join Fox as an NFL game anlyst - will team with Kenny Albert.
There are expected to be changes with CBS’ NFL announcing teams, too, with Charles Davis becoming the network’s No. 2 game analyst (as we broke here previously) and analysts Rich Gannon and Trent Green expected to switch broadcast partners.
▪ For five nights beginning Monday, TNT will debut The Arena, billed as a “a new in-depth storytelling franchise created to provide a thought-provoking forum for content on topics occurring on and off the court of play.”
The program will examine “the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter movement, systemic racial injustices and the changing landscape of society since the NBA postponed play through the point of view of players, NBA teams, their fans and communities.”
Cari Champion will host, with Dwyane Wade, Charles Barkley, Draymond Green and Jemele Hill contributing.
The program will air at 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and 10 p.m. on Wednesday.
Here’s my Friday Heat piece on Tyler Herro and his plans “to be an All Star one day.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2020 at 12:38 PM.
