Spurs’ Gregg Popovich Hold Nothing Back Explaining NBA Bubble’s Success

It doesn’t matter what COVID-19 cases look like in Florida right now, because the NBA bubble is working.

And better than anyone could have anticipated.

For the third straight week, the league announced it saw no positive COVID-19 results within the NBA’s campus in Walt Disney World of the 343 players tested.

Upon announcing its health and safety protocols to restart the league, Adam Silver admitted he fully expected that coronavirus cases would arise. But since players arrived with their teams and isolated, that surprisingly hasn’t been the case.

And San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich held nothing back when he gave his opinion of why that is.

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Here’s his full response, via USA TODAY’s Mark Medina:

There’s absolutely no doubt that the NBA, under the leadership of Adam Silver, has done a magnificent job of being visionaries in the sense of looking at the big picture and trying to figure out what unintended consequences may appear. Right down the line since the day we got here, everything has been so efficient, disciplined and done with ease. It’s not like being at basic training in the military. It’s very organized like the military. But everyone involved is here to help and be on the same page and to get this season going again and to get to the playoffs and crown a champion. The league deserves a lot of credit under Adam’s leadership. The players deserve credit for showing the discipline that’s necessary. I think it’s a great example for the country.

Number one, our leader had a vision and knew how to organize and did it efficiently. The participants, unlike many of our citizens, have been very disciplined about reaching this goal and coming together for a common purpose. We can look at our country and realize from the top we don’t have the ability to organize for al the reasons we know. As a population, you worry about the fiber of our country to some degree because we just don’t have the discipline. All we want is this instant gratification. People don’t understand the long-term effects. It would’ve been a lot more wise spending time worrying about how to open schools than worrying about how to open bars. We open the bars, etc, and now we’re in this very difficult position with schools. Had we had leadership to have that vision in the first place, we might have acted differently earlier so we’re not in this situation with out teachers, our students and our families along with front-line workers in hospitals and cities that are already in danger.

The NBA certainly did things right, along with the other teams that are playing their seasons out in a centralized location like the NHL and MLS.

Hopefully, these numbers stay put.

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