Analysis: The NBA restart is about to restart, with purpose

The restart is about to restart.

Basketball will be played again inside the NBA’s bubble at Walt Disney World on Friday, albeit of the practice variety. Playoff matchups are set to resume on Saturday, meaning games will have stopped for three days while players protested the shooting of a Black man by police in Wisconsin earlier this week.

To shut up and dribble has never been less of an option for players. LeBron James is helping lead a massive get-out-the-vote effort, and Stephen Curry appeared with his family in a video aired as part of the Democratic National Convention last week. The bubble's purpose was two-fold — crown a champion, and help players seek societal changes that simply haven’t come fast enough for their liking. That was what brought them to Central Florida, and ultimately, that's why they decided to stay now.

“There’s a lot of emotions built up with what’s going on," Miami’s Andre Iguodala said Thursday night from the bubble at Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

Iguodala, the First Vice President of the National Basketball Players Association — making him the second-highest ranking player in the union behind only Chris Paul — wrote a best-selling book last year, a 256-page memoir of his life and career.

The saga of this week alone is another story in itself, he said.

“The last 24 hours would be another 256 pages,” Iguodala said Thursday. “It’s been very interesting.”

There was the refusal to play by the Milwaukee Bucks, something that caught the league — and even the Bucks’ would-be opponent Wednesday, the Orlando Magic — by surprise. That led to two other games being called off, and ultimately a three-hour meeting involving players, coaches and others where some suggested the prudent move would be to end the season.

By...