Ben Golliver’s Travels From Inside the ‘Bubble’
Bubbleball: Inside the NBA’s Fight to Save a Season
By Ben Golliver
Abrams Press
Ben Golliver didn’t just write the first book of his career. He lived it.
The Washington Post’s NBA writer was one of the select few who spent the entirety of the league’s post-shutdown portion of the 2019-20 season in the isolation zone — called the “Bubble” — at Disney World.
In “Bubbleball,” Golliver chronicles the three-months-plus experience of being inside the Orlando Bubble that allowed the NBA to complete its season and saved the league more than $1 billion in revenue.
“The Bubble was the most rewarding professional experience of my life — so intensive and emotional and rare,” Golliver told me recently. And also, one of the more physically exhausting and emotionally draining times a sportswriter will go through.
First, a little background on Golliver, who lives in Los Angeles and has worked for the Post since 2018. He is 37, a former soccer midfielder and striker at Beaverton High and a card-carrying hoops addict.
“My dad (Roger Golliver) went to Michigan State at the same time as Magic Johnson,” Ben says. “One of my first basketball memories was of going to a Blazer game when I was 8 and Clyde Drexler getting ejected. I was crying on the concourse of Memorial Coliseum. After that, I became a Michael Jordan addict. I was pretty much hooked on the sport from then on.”
Golliver graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore but never took a journalism class.
“I randomly took part in (the school’s) creative writing program, which is one of the best in the country,” he says. “It was a fun experience to get into fiction, nonfiction and poetry.”
Upon graduation, Golliver intended to enter the Peace Corps. He got turned down at the last minute because of a heart condition that required two surgeries and, at age 25 in 2008, resulted in an artificial valve implant.
Prior to the surgery, Golliver sought out noted cardiologist Dr. Richard Sohn at Providence St. Vincent Hospital.
“He told me, ‘If you’d waited another year to see me, you’d be dead right now,’ ” Golliver says. “That was my aha moment.”
Golliver made drastic life changes. He quit drinking alcohol. He began to eat healthier — in 2014, he completed the conversion to being a vegetarian — and take better care of himself.
“I’m trying to make sure I can live to see 80 or 90,” Golliver says.
Ben’s blog: Draft Kevin Durant.
In 2007, the Trail Blazers won the draft lottery and earned the No. 1 pick. Golliver started his own blog that night: “Draft Kevin Durant.” He soon landed a gig with “Blazers Edge,” with whom he wrote for seven years. His day job was in marketing while he moonlighted with the Blazers’ prime fan site.
Blazers Edge logo. (Courtesy blazersedge.com)
Golliver was hired by CBSsports.com in 2010 — “my first real job,” he says — joined Sports Illustrated in 2012 and moved to Los Angeles in 2015, all the while gaining the experience and cred as a writer that got him to the Post, one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country.
When the NBA reconvened after the four-month hiatus due to COVID-19, Golliver entered the Bubble “scared for my health.” His underlying heart condition nearly got him eliminated before a doctor’s clean bill of health declaration earned the NBA’s approval.
Due to health and safety issues, the NBA allowed only 10 print and web reporters into the Bubble at any one time. Golliver was one of five or six who was there for its entirety.
Few media outlets could afford to send a reporter. The cost for Golliver’s 93 days in the Bubble: $54,000.
“It cost the Post more to send me than I earned at my first job at CBS Sports,” Golliver says.
Before he headed for Orlando, Golliver consulted his local doctor, a cardiologist and a psychiatrist.
“I felt professionally obligated to go, but I was nervous,” he says. That gradually was assuaged as he recognized all the safety and security precautions in place. Golliver was basically confined to his hotel room for three months while undergoing daily COVID-19 testing. There were “four layers” of security to go through any time he went to an arena for a game.
It didn’t occur to Golliver to write a book until he started writing daily diary entries for the Post.
“I was surprised that so many people read them,” he says. “One of them was (a literary) agent. He said, ‘Look, this is a book,’ and asked if I was interested.”
Within the first month of the Bubble, Golliver had reached an agreement with his publisher.
“I wanted to have something to show for the pandemic,” he says. “I didn’t want to look back and think, ‘I wasted a year of my life.’ ”
Golliver received permission from the Post as long as he waited until the season was over to begin writing the book.
“My first obligation was to the Post,” he says. “I took notes and wrote hundreds of stories, which served as the basis for the book.”
Golliver does an excellent job taking the reader inside the Bubble and describing what he — and the players from the 22 participating teams — went through. For Golliver, it was almost like a mission to Mars, an out-of-body experience of sorts.
“Within 48 hours of being there, it was clear that it would be the coolest challenges and one of the most difficult things I’d ever do,” he says. “It was a huge adventure and a very intimate experience.”
Thought he took daily walks on the Disney campus, Golliver gained some weight. He didn’t sleep well.
“I was feeling real anxious,” he says. But he was also excited to be able to watch the game’s greatest players up close. With so few media members on hands and no fans, his seats in the small Disney venues were so close to the action, he could hear sounds you never hear in an NBA arena and almost feel the basketball being played.
“The Bubble was hard because the lifestyle was repressive, with so much security and surveillance — so much ‘Big Brother is watching,’ ” Golliver says. “But it was also a golden opportunity for a person like me who loves the NBA. There were two or three games to go to every day. There was always a superstar to watch play. One day I watched eight (future) Hall-of-Famers. The hardest thing to do was to pace myself. There was so much basketball, and all the rules that weighed you down.”
Beginning with the second round of the playoffs, Golliver attended every game and post-game press conference. Most of the reporting took place in the conference group settings.
“There were occasional in-person one-on-one opportunities, but most (subjects) wanted to do it over Zoom,” he says. “You’re like a kid in the candy store, but all the candy is under lock and key. It’s right outside your grasp.”
Golliver cuts to the heart of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which played an integral role in the bubble and caused for the postponement of several games. He conveys the extraordinary lengths the league took to keep positive tests to a minimum and the emotional toll it took on the players to be isolated from their family and friends for such a long period. He takes a close look at many of the important characters inside the Bubble from interviews with such as Matt Tatum, the NBA’s deputy commissioner, players union chief Michelle Roberts and Utah center Rudy Gobert, the first player to test positive for the virus.
The last night, writes Golliver, was “the most memorable, gratifying and fun night of my career.” He saw the Lakers wrap up the title with a Game-6 win over the Heat, got champagne-sprayed by a celebrating LeBron James and realized he could fly home and reunite with the outside world the next day.
Golliver took a week off, spending several days visiting California national parks “to clear my head,” then embarked on writing the book. From the last week of October to January 1, 2021, he wrote five hours a day every day, all the while covering free agency and the NBA draft for the Post. “It was hectic,” he says.
The book was completed by the end of February and released on May 4. (It is also available in audio book).
In the book, Golliver pledges never to visit Disney World again unless he were there on assignment.
“The big irony, I don’t like cartoons,” he explains. “I hate amusement parks. I hate (waiting in) lines. I don’t have any kids. It wound up being just fine, but it’s just my personality to not be interested in going back. I like to get out to the great outdoors — part of being raised in Portland and all the outdoor opportunities of Oregon, I guess.”
The Bubble, Golliver writes, cost $200 million but saved the NBA from $1.5 billion in lost revenue. Revenues were still down 10 percent, and TV viewership for the Finals dropped about 50 percent from the previous season, from an average of about 15.1 million to 7.5 million per game.
“Interest level was insane at the start, but I think some of the people were interested in the whole thing failing,” Golliver says. “They were ‘hate-watching’ it. Once it became clear players were going to stay healthy, (viewership) dropped off. By the time they got to the conference finals, the other sports were starting up and they were competing with college football and the NFL.
“It’s too bad, because it was a very well-played postseason. It was for the die-hards, and they really appreciated it. A lot of other people missed out.”
Golliver is one of those die-hards, and he certainly didn’t miss out. He won’t skip a beat, either. He is scheduled to cover the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer. There, he will get his fill of basketball. Once a hoops addict, always one.
Readers: what are your thoughts? I would love to hear them in the comments below.
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