The Loop
The NBA is popping up a barbershop inside the bubble . . . oh to be a fly on that wall
The NBA Bubble got off to a rocky start. Just as everyone arrived, coronavirus cases in Florida went boom. Nobody (except J.R.) liked the food. Some genius wandered off campus to pick up delivery, much to the chagrin of his mother. But gradually bubble life has begun to mimic actual life, or at least a rudimentary form of it. Guys are shotgunning beers. They’re reading books. They’re playing 18, making pancakes and even fishing. And this weekend, the NBA popped up it’s most essential addition yet: A barbershop.
LeBron’s plugs nearly wept at the sight of it.
Donovan Mitchell called it a “real life 2K neighborhood,” which says a lot about how NBA players currently view their bubblicious existence (i.e. less real than a video game). Still, we’d pay a large sum of Monopoly money for Seth Brundle to turn us into a fly for that wall. What do you think they would talk about? The new Pop Smoke album? Their Guangzhou summer homes? Adam Silver’s home planet? Is this the Matrix? That pre-screening of ‘Tenet’ (please someone give these guys a pre-screening of ‘Tenet’)? We need to know like Josh Jackson needs high fructose corn syrup to live.
On one hand, the NBA should keep their intentions pure. Let the new barbershop be a place where the guys can just be guys and not worry about the rest of the Mickey Mouse crap, literally and figuratively, that they currently have to. On the other, a web series of NBA heads sitting around the bubble barbershop gossiping about each other for eight hours a day would single handedly save the internet. The Real Housewives of Magic Kingdom? Or better yet, a show about nothing. We could call it ‘Seinfeld.’ Yeah, that has a nice ring to it . . .