Los Angeles – The NBA’s reach extends across the globe, broadcasting to more than 200 countries and territories while generating almost $9 billion in annual revenue. Its top players are the most powerful in sports, able to reach tens of millions and spark change with a single social media post. The behemoth’s reach and influence across cultures and time zones is built on a massive sum of interconnected parts.
It is a fragile behemoth too, those same woven connections vulnerable to the chain reactions upon which a pandemic preys.
However, a pandemic didn’t seem to be on the minds of players as recently as the first week of March, when the insouciance of the NBA mirrored that of sports at large and the rest of the country.