It is without a doubt, that the NBA set a sports standard in the inaugural COVID 2020 sports season with their handling of COVID in the "bubble". With zero cases recorded in players at the time, the formula of isolation, and consistent Covid testing was a formula of success. As the 2021 season began outside the bubble, inevitable problems began to rear their heads, with players left and right testing positive for the deadly Coronavirus. This is a surprise to no one however, due to each team being able to play in their home markets, reduced travel and lockdown sanctions, and an overall impatience when it comes to beating the pandemic. Players like Kyrie Irving and James Harden opting to go to family gatherings, knowingly breaking NBA protocol showed where most players heads were at regarding Corona and the NBA, they weren't taking it very seriously. Like any organization trying to maintain compliance with national laws and regulations related to the pandemic the NBA decided they needed to not only enforce their rules more strictly, but completely revamp them, adding what many deemed, "performative" changes to their COVID rulebook.
"One of the guidelines that got plenty of attention was a mandate that players from opposing teams should not hug or shake hands before or after the game.
On Saturday night, we saw just how strict the league is planning to be with these new guidelines. After the Brooklyn Nets' win over the Miami Heat, Bam Adebayo and Kyrie Irving stopped to chat, and a security person ran in and pulled Adebayo away before the two could exchange jerseys."
While it is understood that as an organization that is in multiple markets across the nation, it is a bad look to not have strict safety protocol to handle players that can go out into the public, a closer analysis of the jersey rule highlights just how performative, and useless some of the rules and protocol were. Basketball is a contact sport, compared to tackle football and rugby sure it isn't nearly as physical, but on most every play, players are colliding, hand checking one another, simply swapping sweat and bodily fluids play in and play out. The NBA has no problem with this, due to the games being the way they generate their broadcasting dollars, and fund their league, but decides to implement a rule saying players cannot swap uniforms after the game? I'm not saying I want the NBA to blatantly ignore any situations where Coronavirus exposures are possible, but can we stop acting like this rule is to protect the players, and not anything besides the NBA trying to appease twitter activists and make themselves feel better? If we truly cared about player safety we would either complete an entire season in the bubble until each player is vaccinated, or cancel the NBA season until we as a nation are clear of the dangers of the pandemic.
What I'm surprised about is the fact that they allowed the bubble breaches to happen so frequently and carelessly, because of the massive amount of money at stake. An NBA season getting cancelled or cut short would mean billions of TV dollars flushed down the toilet. The fact that they went without a bubble to start, even if that meant happier players and less money spent on bubbles to begin with is surprising, considering that across the globe, even in countries where covid wasn't at severe, bubbles were used for sports irrespective of case numbers.
The NBA always seems to struggle with rules going too far or not going far enough but the Covid scenario has produced far more of the former. While extraordinary situations call for big changes, like you stated, some of these rules just seemed way too absurd from my perspective. It should be obvious to the NBA that playing a whole night of contact sports would invalidate the need for a no handshakes and jersey swap rule but they made one anyway. Makes one wonder why? Personally, it feels like they are just trying to put up a good front and the no handshakes rule was one means of doing that. Making sure it appears one has good Covid practice…