NBA Commissioner Adam Silver channeled the late Tom Petty this afternoon when he told reporters that the NBA won’t back down from next month’s return, despite a bunch of Florida dipshits running around and getting COVID-19 and creating a surge in cases.

Silver:

He’s right. This is why they drew up the 100+ page health and safety guideline in the first place, to protect the bubble from the unwashed peasants going about their Florida business and pretending like the Coronavirus doesn’t exist.

Of course there’s concern as we send MLS and NBA players directly into the danger zone, but they will not be intermingling with the common folk. They will charter to Orlando, use an executive airport, and then shuttle to the somewhat-hermetically-sealed bubble where they must adhere to strict protocols in order to earn their millions of dollars. We’re not mixing them in with the barefoot guy playing Jimmy Buffett cover tunes on Duval Street in Key West.

Silver did admit the league might have to stop playing if there’s a rash of COVID inside the bubble, but that a few cases here and there wouldn’t necessitate the kibosh. And of course the NBA didn’t bend over backwards to secure the facilities at Disney World and draw up 100 pages of rules just to turn around and say, “you know what, fuck it, we’re not going.”

Either you trust yourself and your guidelines, or you don’t. They were written specifically to address the situation we now find ourselves in.