Enter the bubble: The Dallas Morning News’ Brad Townsend joins few others to cover the NBA’s return from inside Disney World

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — At 10:41 a.m. Sunday, my masked transportation-service driver arrived at the gatehouse fronting the Coronado Springs Resort. He cracked his window just enough for his voice to reach the also-masked security guard.

The guard checked her clipboard, peered into the backseat and asked me to hold my driver’s license to the window.

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “Welcome home.”

Up went the barrier arm and into the NBA Bubble I rode. Thankfully there was no popping sound.

As one of 10 print reporters credentialed to cover the NBA’s 2019-20 season restart from inside the so-called bubble on the Disney World complex, the last thing I want is to become part of the story. But as of Sunday the “Magic 10,” as a colleague dubbed us, joined the 22-team ecosystem here.

Clearly “magic” is a nod to the backdrop, not our relevance, as the NBA attempts to finish a season that on March 11 was forced into hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As for the bubble, it’s actually five sequestered zones within Disney World’s sprawling 39-square-mile site — five smaller bubbles that in theory are supposed to feel connected, as one big bubble.

The Mavericks and the other 21 teams arrived during a three-day span early last week, with players and staff members quarantining in their rooms for 36 to 48 hours before beginning their training camp 2.0 — nearly 10 months after training camp 1.0 in September.

Here is how fiercely the NBA wants to protect this giant Petri dish from coronavirus contamination: Within 5 minutes of getting my resort “key,” which actually is a wrist band that unlocks my door, I was in my casita, where I am to remain during seven days of quarantine and daily testing.

I was given a health-monitoring kit that included an oral thermometer, a fingertip pulse oximeter and a Magic-Band that will monitor our health throughout our stay and serve as a checkpoint for testing efficiency.

For the next seven days, all of my meals and drinks will be delivered and left outside my room. The daily tests — shallow nose swabs and saliva tests — will be conducted in-room. If my tests are negative for those seven days, I’ll be released to the larger bubble, able to cover practices, scrimmages (starting July 22), shootarounds and games (starting July 30).

In essence for the next seven days I’ll be in my own bubble: A 314-square foot one with a 50-inch TV, two queen beds, a bathroom and a granite-top desk. But, hey, I have a window and partial pool view, and this is a 3-star resort.

Ernie Pyle, I’m not.

I’m not certain of all members of the Magic 10, but I know they at least include The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, USA Today, Boston Globe and the Athletic.

We are the few, the proud, the soon-to-be stir-crazy. A week from now, though, negative COVID tests willing, we will have the privilege of covering fascinating narratives — league vs. virus; games with no fans; will playoff series be decided by which teams have fewer COVID-19 cases?

Though we will be in arenas and practice gyms, we will cover everything from a safe social distance — a proximity alarm chip in our credential will send warning signals anytime we are within 6 feet of another chip wearer for more than 5 seconds.

Why, exactly, did The Dallas Morning News apply for one of the bubble credentials, with its $550-per-day costs for testing and lodging and food? Why not a Group 2 credential that allows for fringe coverage — entry into games, but not postgame news conferences or practices?

Well, The News has chronicled the Mavericks’ every step since their 1980 birth. Through 40 seasons we have covered all 3,217 of the team’s regular-season games and all 196 playoff games.

Our presence here, though, is less about the streak than the moment. Assuming they clinch a playoff berth during the seeding games, a virtual certainty, the Mavericks will play their first postseason games since 2016.

It will be the first playoff berth of the Luka Doncic-Kristaps Porzingis Era. It will be the franchise’s first playoffs without Dirk Nowitzki since 1990. The Mavericks will have an opportunity to win their first playoff series since the 2011 NBA Finals.

And of course the circumstances are historic. The pandemic halted sports at all levels. NASCAR and the PGA Tour gradually have come back, without fans. There remain significant obstacles for the returns of Major League Baseball, the NHL and even the almighty NFL.

The NBA’s return also carries powerful social significance, in the aftermath of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks and others at the hands of law enforcement and Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed while jogging, and Black Lives Matter marches still occurring across America.

Every team here has committed to using this stage as an opportunity to promote social justice and racial equality.

And of all the major pro sports returns, this single-site, closed-campus experiment seemingly has the best chance of succeeding, in part because the NBA has played more than two-thirds of its regular season. These next three months, concluding with the NBA Finals in October, well could be the best sports has to offer in the Year of COVID-19.

On Saturday, exactly four months after the NBA’s hiatus began, I began the 1,096-mile trek here. That’s right: I decided to drive, reasoning that getting on a commercial flight was the more COVID-risky.

At 6 a.m., I hugged my wife Sydney and our college-age twins Mally and Faith on our driveway. It was the first time during the pandemic that the twins had awakened before 10 a.m. If that moment wasn’t true love, I don’t know what is.

I set out toward the rising sun, with coffee, tea, a Dr. Pepper, a Cinnabon, an Italian sub and Sirius XM for subsistence. Somehow I drove for 15 hours that day, with only three restroom and four gas stops, arriving in Gainesville (Florida, not Texas) at 10:30 p.m.

That left a mere 100-mile drive Sunday morning to the Orlando Airport to turn in my rental car and get picked up for my sanitized ride into the bubble.

The trek is done, but the odyssey is just beginning. Covid test results willing, this will be my home for at least seven weeks, through the first round of the playoffs.

It’s 8 p.m. and I just got a loud single knock on my door. Dinner left on the stoop. Just six more days until, hopefully, I get to see in-person basketball practice soon followed by a season conclusion we’ll never forget.

Find more Mavericks stories from The Dallas Morning News here.