The troubled, truncated 2020 sports season will be remembered as the Year of the Bubble. As a pandemic raged and protests of systemic racism rocked the United States, athletes played on. Those who competed in the controlled environment of a bubble had the most success over the novel coronavirus. Science, for the win.
But 2020 was about more than finding a way to play. For the WNBA and the NBA in Florida, the bubble didn’t just protect. It projected the voices of the players in support of the Black Lives Matter movement after the fatal shootings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.
Then there was another shooting. After the police critically wounded Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Bucks decided not to play a playoff game, the first domino to fall in a wave of disruption across sports.
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