There Is No Escapism From America’s Current Crises
The NBA strikes are a fitting consequence of problems that touch everyone, everywhere.
In an empty arena, the seats a ghost’s playground, the floors shiny and robbed of traffic, everything is plain and naked and disturbingly honest. And in that absence is a lesson about what we think we should see.
If you had found yourself wanting to watch the NBA playoffs the night of August 26, live from the league’s quarantine “bubble” in Florida, this was the reality you faced. Emptiness, confusion, and signs of corporate sponsorship.
We’re now a week past the historic NBA players’ strike that upended sports in this country, and even though the basketball playoffs have returned, the action continues to have a much deeper meaning for a country where nothing can truly exist in a bubble, whose crises are pervasive and persistent.
