SPORTING WORLD NOW IN FULL GEAR AMIDST MOST TRYING TIMES AND SOCIAL ISSUES
And now it looks like the sporting world is much alive in this most trying of the pandemic spiced up with issues of social injustice frustrations in the United States. The National Basketball Association (NBA) now entered its second-week of the first round playoffs while the 2020 US Tennis Open its door this week and more sporting events to follow but be played with the basic health protocols in this of the COVID 19 pandemic. With the second round of the NBA postseason set to begin Thursday when Toronto plays Boston, players from both teams say there have been discussions about whether they should boycott games following the police shooting in Wisconsin of Jacob Blake, a Black man. Players and coaches around the league say they have been frustrated and are upset after seeing cellphone video that showed Blake being shot multiple times after they have spent a month and a half in the bubble calling for reform. In the NBA first one playoff, it was only a week ago when the sky was falling on the on the two NBA’s best teama in the regular season, Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers lost their playoff openers and look vulnerable, But not so much now that both are now looking for second round berths. The Bucks lead the Orlando Magic 3-1; the Lakers lead the Portland Trail Blazers 3-1. The other game in Thursday’s tripleheader is Game 5 between the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder, that series knotted at two games apiece and Utah leading Denver, 3-2. In the US Tennis Open in New York, Grand Slam champion Serena Williams got flustered when she got called for taking too much time between points. Later, she flung away her racket after letting the second set get away. In the end, she finished rather meekly in a 5-7, 7-6 (5), 6-1 upset against Maria Sakkari of Greece on Tuesday night. In football, meanwhile, when Lionel Messi won an unprecedented sixth Ballon d’Or in December last year, the speculation had already begun over his career at Barcelona. The end of an era of 33-year-old Argentine footballing genius was increasingly unable single-handedly to rescue his imploding club, as he had done so often in the past. Barcelona, despite lifting the La Liga title, had collapsed at the end of the 2018-19 season, losing a 3-0 semi-final lead, including two Messi goals, to Liverpool in the Champions League. In the homefront, fearing that a canceled season will put a bigger strain on the finances of the league and its teams, the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) on Tuesday shifted its focus on putting together its own bubble environment with four possible locations that will be subject to approval of the Board of Governors.
The league, whose teams started practicing on Tuesday, is looking to take a page from what the NBA has done with its hugely successful bubble in Disney World, Florida, which reportedly cost $180 million. PBA chair Ricky Vargas identified four possible sites in the area surrounding the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, the Inspire Sports Academy in Calamba, Laguna, Subic, Pampanga and Batangas City.#