A Pandemic-Proof Bubble?

When the coronavirus hit the United States, the N.B.A. was faced with a unique challenge. It seemed impossible to impose social distancing in basketball, an indoor sport with players almost constantly jostling one another for more than two hours. However, there was a big financial incentive to keep games going: ending the 2019 season early would have cost the league an estimated $1 billion in television revenue.

The solution? A sealed campus for players, staff and selected journalists at Disney World in Florida.

Marc Stein, who covers the N.B.A. for The New York Times, has been living out of a hotel room in the complex for the last 40 days. Today, we speak to him about what life is like inside the bubble.

Guest: Marc Stein, a sports reporter for The New York Times.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Background reading:

• Twenty-two of the league’s 30 teams are living in the Disney World complex. Life on the campus is both strange and mundane.
• The N.B.A. has sought to replicate the home-court edge through music, audio cues and graphics from the “home” teams’ arenas.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.