NATIONWIDE — The beginning of the end of the 2019-2020 NBA season is near. Starting on Thursday, 22 teams will finish a curtailed regular-season basketball schedule, leading up to a playoff tournament planned to finish this fall. To make it work in the age of COVID-19, the league has put the players and staff of the participating teams in a Disney resort-turned-closed-campus popularly known as “the bubble.”

Over the next eight games, the 12 teams that have secured playoff berths are playing to fine-tune their line-ups, work into game shape, or earn more favorable matchups for the playoff tournament following shortly after the seeding games are done. The remaining 10 teams are fighting for the final four playoff spots – and the opportunity to make a surprise postseason on the national stage.

The NBA was no different than the rest of the country in early March, as the novel coronavirus pandemic began to bubble into consciousness. Though the league was setting early precautionary measures, the disease’s spread had yet to be taken seriously by many. Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert even made light of player-media distancing precautions, making a point to touch the recording equipment of every reporter in the media room during an early March interview session.

Then, on March 11, a game between the Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder was stopped only moments before tip-off when an OKC medical staffer sprinted onto the court to talk to referees, and the game was canceled. Gobert had tested positive for COVID-19; over the next few days, a handful of other players would also test positive.

Within hours of that news, the NBA announced the season would be suspended indefinitely. The league remained suspended until late June, when the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association agreed to restart and finish out the season at a single-site campus, in games played with no fans, and only with teams with a shot at playoff contention. For the better part of July, about 350 players and hundreds of coaches and staff members from 22 teams have lived at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, getting into game shape, practicing and playing exhibition scrimmages.

The new court set-up is a strict departure from what fans are used to seeing. Each team’s bench area looks like rows of spaced-out movie theater seating, encouraging physical distance between players. The scorer’s table is ensconced in a large, plexiglass cubicle that looks like the boards of a hockey rink, and the court itself is surrounded on three sides by video boards, styled with the colors and logos of that game’s “home” team. 

The league has offered fans the chance to have their own faces streamed live on the video boards, to maintain some semblance of a player-fan connection; it’s the live-action version of cardboard fan cutouts that some baseball and soccer teams have stuck in seats behind home plate.

The courts also have “Black Lives Matter” prominently painted at center court, reflecting the league and the players’ call for attention to racial inequalities in America. Players will be allowed to wear uniforms with messages including “Black Lives Matter,” “Say Their Names,” “I Can’t Breathe” and other messages referencing police brutality and systemic racism.

“A shared goal of our season restart will be to use our platform in Orlando to bring attention to these important issues of social justice,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told NBA.com.

“I'm here to support my teammates, by any means, but at the same time, you can't forget what's going on in the world with all the social injustice, racism and things like that,” Milwaukee Bucks guard George Hill said. “So I'm just trying to keep that alive, making sure that that's not swept underneath the rug while we're playing this game that we're so blessed to play.”

As the league prepared to announce its restart, Silver described the protocols within the “closed network” that is the bubble: everyone undergoes COVID-19 testing daily; no player or staff family members or friends will be allowed to visit until the first round of the playoffs; and should anyone test positive, they will immediately go into quarantine, and the league would enter a contact-tracing protocol. Anyone missing their daily COVID test would be subject to a single-day quarantine.

Players and staffers can leave the bubble with permission and are subject to only four-day quarantines, so long as they continue to test negative during their time outside the bubble. But anyone breaching the perimeter without approval would undergo a mandatory 10-day quarantine in their hotel room, and would be subject to nasopharyngeal swab COVID-19 testing – tests using deep, six-inch long nasal swabs.

In the weeks since teams entered the bubble, it became clear that unauthorized bubble breaches would be treated the same for bench players and key players alike. On July 13, the league announced that Sacramento Kings center Richaun Holmes was subject to the 10-day quarantine for simply crossing the campus line to receive a food delivery. 

Los Angeles Clippers guard Lou Williams – a three-time winner of the league’s Sixth Man of the Year award – recently made headlines for testing the bubble permissions. Williams is serving a 10-day quarantine for an excursion he made during an excused absence.

While away in Georgia for a funeral viewing, Williams was photographed at Atlanta’s Magic City strip club getting dinner. The photo, posted by rapper Jack Harlow and very quickly deleted, reportedly showed Williams wearing a mask handed out by the league in the bubble and holding a drink.

Williams insists that he was there for the food — he has a specialty order of chicken wings named for him on the Magic City menu — and has largely accepted the roasting he’s taking from social media, tweeting “Leave it alone. Just enjoy the memes lol” to a supporter on Saturday.

Whether he was truly just picking up wings or taking in some entertainment, Williams will miss at least two of the eight seeding games as a result of the 10-day quarantine.

Though the Clippers will miss Williams’s playmaking and scoring ability off the bench, it’s almost certain that the Western Conference will run through Los Angeles, one way or another. The Clippers and the Los Angeles Lakers and the Clippers had the two best records in the Western Conference this season (44-20 and 49-14, respectively).

The Lakers are, of course, the Lakers. In his second season in L.A., league icon LeBron James has repeatedly promised via social media that he will return the Lakers to glory. This year, he’s got center Anthony Davis, a multi-time MVP candidate and All-NBA level player alongside him.

“We’ve got a close-knit group,” James said. “We have a lot of togetherness, a lot of brotherhood with this franchise, and we care for one another. Not only on the floor but off the floor as well.”

But the Lakers will be without their top two playmaking point guards, Avery Bradley and Rajon Rondo, for much of the stretch run. Bradley opted not to join the team in Orlando, instead staying with his family; Rondo broke his thumb during a practice and will be out for six to eight weeks. Younger players, such as fan-favorite Alex Caruso, will have to step up in their absence.

The Clippers feature two of the league’s top players in forwards Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, and a bench packed with talent, including Williams, defensive stopper Patrick Beverly and talented big man Montrezl Harrel. Their big question is if the players have the chemistry to play together effectively – Leonard and George only played together in half of the team’s games this season due to injury, and multiple players have spent time away from the team, and the bubble, for various reasons this month.

Other teams in the west may give the Lakers and the Clippers a run for their money, particularly the Denver Nuggets (43-22) and their superstar center Nikola Jokic; the Utah Jazz (41-23), with all-world defender Rudy Gobert and scoring threat Donovan Mitchell; or even the Dallas Mavericks (40-27) and their guard phenom Luka Doncic – if he can continue to avoid the league’s sideline camera.

The Eastern Conference’s Milwaukee Bucks had the best record in the league (53-12) before the season was suspended, and are led by MVP favorite Giannis Antetokounmpo, whose talents are summed up in his “Greek Freak” nickname: he’s an astonishing defender and one of the league’s most dangerous scoring threats. Beyond Antetokounmpo, the Bucks are stacked. The team regularly obliterated opponents throughout the season, beating teams by 20 or more points 19 times.

Milwaukee began time in the bubble short-handed, as guards Eric Bledsoe and Pat Connaughton were diagnosed with COVID-19. Bledsoe resumed practicing with the team on July 24.

"Eric looked great. Literally, just seeing him and having him in our presence, being able to talk to him and laugh with him. It was great, so really happy to have him,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “Considering it's been a while since he's been able to touch the ball or do anything, he was very good.”

Milwaukee’s greatest challengers in the East will be the defending champion Toronto Raptors (46-18), who have remained a top team under the leadership of guard Kyle Lowry despite losing Kawhi Leonard in free agency; and the Boston Celtics (43-21), who are anchored by rising star Jason Tatum and point guard Kemba Walker. 

Thus far, the NBA’s bubble experiment appears to be working. On Wednesday, the league and the player’s union jointly announced that of the 344 players tested for COVID-19 since July 20, none have tested positive.

What remains to be seen is if the league will continue to keep its players in the bubble. Players Association Executive Director Michele Roberts told ESPN that she thinks the NBA may have to compete in a bubble for the 2020-2021 season. The next season is tentatively scheduled to begin Dec. 1, 2020, according to the league.

The NBA and the NHL are the only two North American professional sports leagues currently using the closed-campus concept. The NFL is considering the standard travel model, with teams playing in stadiums either without fans or with partial-attendance. Major League Baseball teams are playing a condensed schedule in empty stadiums, but traveling to other team’s ballparks. But a COVID-19 outbreak among Miami Marlins players and staff has caused Miami and two other teams to postpone games, giving credence to the bubble model.

“All I know is what I know now. So it may be that, if the bubble is the way to play, then that is likely gonna be the way we play next season, if things remain as they are,” Roberts said.