A weekly dive into the NBA’s hottest topics.
1. Bol Bol’s debut was the perfect way for basketball to return
The backdrop was discordant: coaches separated by empty chairs, wearing masks, the Black Lives Matter logo parallel to the sideline — reminders of the conditions outside the Disney campus, how perilous and fragile a distraction the NBA’s return is.
But the game was the game — the same give or take some rust.
At 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Denver Nuggets rookie center Bol Bol, 7-foot-2 and spindly, shifted from one foot to the other at the center line before a referee threw a basketball into the air, initiating the first NBA action in 131 days.