Bubbleball, Ben Golliver
Bubbleball, Ben Golliver
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Bubbleball
Inside the NBA's Fight to Save a Season

Author: Ben Golliver

Narrator: Ben Golliver

Unabridged: 11 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/27/2021

Synopsis

When NBA player Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2020, the league shut down immediately, bringing a shocking, sudden pause to the season. As the pandemic raged, it looked as if it might be the first year in league history with no champion. But four months later, after meticulous planning, twenty-two teams resumed play in a bubble at Disney Worlda restricted, single-site locale cut off from the outside world. Due to health concerns, the league invited only a handful of reporters, who were required to sacrifice medical privacy, live in a hotel room for more than three months, and submit to daily coronavirus testing in hopes of keeping the bubble from bursting. In exchange for the constant monitoring and restricted movement, they were allowed into a basketball fan's dream, with a courtside seat at dozens of games in nearly empty arenas. Ben Golliver, the national NBA writer for The Washington Post, was one of those allowed access. Bubbleball is his account of the season and life inside, telling the story of how basketball bounced back from its shutdown, how players staged headline-grabbing social-justice protests, and how Lakers star LeBron James chased his fourth ring in unconventional and unforgettable circumstances. Based on months of reporting in the exclusive, confined environment, this is an entertaining record of an extraordinary season.

About Ben Golliver

Ben Golliver is the national NBA writer for The Washington Post, the host of Sports Illustrated’s Open Floor podcast, and the co-founder of the Greatest of all Talk NBA podcast. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars program, he has been covering the NBA since 2007. Previously a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, he lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Adam on June 02, 2021

Man, I really wanted to like this book. I'm a fan of the author and I listen to his podcast. I was hoping this book would be an in-depth analysis and behind-the-scenes look at the NBA playoff bubble in 2020. There IS some of that, but only about 25 percent of the book. The rest is just a cut-and-dri......more

Goodreads review by Slappy on June 13, 2021

My expectation was that this was going to have a lot of behind the scenes stuff, that the experience would be like reading a Michael Lewis or Bob Woodward book. Instead we get 70% game recaps , and 30% basic info about how the Disney bubble worked, none of which we didn't already know. I knew as muc......more

Goodreads review by Brandon on May 16, 2022

Wasn’t bad, but I expected more behind the scenes information. I enjoyed the commentary on the protests and everything that happened around the refusal to play the bucks game, but most of the information wasn’t anything I didn’t already know just by being a big basketball fan.......more

Goodreads review by Mohamed Anees on January 14, 2023

As as basketball fan, I knew I had to read this and having been "on the frontlines" in Southern California (2019-2022) during my medical residency, I wanted to see how a basketball journalist and not just any journalist, but Ben Golliver, a fellow native Oregonian, whose parents live the place I cal......more

Goodreads review by Wesley on December 04, 2023

Interesting book about a fascinating time in the NBA and society as a whole. I watched every bubble game because I was so thirsty for for sports, so this book was right up my wheelhouse. Drags a little towards the end, which I think is because the book functions more as a recap with little tidbits s......more

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