The NBA Bubble: How it Became My New Fascination

I’ve been obsessed with the behind the scenes NBA Bubble footage that the players have been capturing ever since I saw one of them on Jimmy Fallon.  And it’s funny, because I didn’t even mean to see the interview…well, I did and I didn’t. I was flipping around the channels, when I saw Common on Jimmy Fallon and stopped to watch the interview. Then I noticed that a basketball player named Matisse Thybulle would also be on that night.

Since he was a basketball player whom I had never heard of, I wouldn’t have stayed to watch his interview had I not have been intrigued by his first name. But I was, so I did.

I have some history with that name, Matisse. It brings me a bit of trauma. Matisse is a French painter… uh, artist, whatever. Matisse is this French guy’s last name. I know this because I used to be a customer service representative for a trash company, and a man called in who lived on Matisse street.

I think what happened was he asked me if I knew who Matisse was and I said I didn’t care. Then he went off on me saying how I should care, gave me a 30 second art history lesson mixed with attitude, after also telling me he wanted to speak with my manager. After that I just listened to what he said, said please and thank you a lot, though never apologizing, because hey, I didn’t care, and I hate it when people think that just because you are a customer service worker, that you are their slave, therapist, sounding board,  for however long you have to be on the call with them. No.

Still, the threat of telling the manager scared me because more often than not, that person was not on my side. Anyway, before we wrapped up the call, he ended up saying he wasn’t going to tell my manager, but next time I shouldn’t be so rude, or whatever he said. I just said, thank you for calling, then I hung up on him.

That was five years ago, but I still remember the feeling of sort of being at his mercy, and that is what I associate with the name Matisse.  So when I saw the name Matisse in the info box, I wanted to see who this player was. Was he black or white? And, was he in fact named after the French guy who has a residential street in California named after him?

Turns out he’s black and white and yes, he was named after that French guy.

Apparently he landed a spot on The Tonight Show because of how insanely popular his YouTube channel, that gives a behind the scenes peak at life inside the NBA bubble, has become.  After watching the interview, I was intrigued.

You could say I’m somewhat of a basketball fan. Not as much anymore since Kobe retired. When Lebron came to LA, it reignited my interest a bit once more. Then when Kobe died, for some reason I really wanted the Purple and Gold to secure another championship.

Since then, I’ve watched a few games, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t know who 75 percent of the guys on the court were. Back in the day, I was familiar with at least all the starters from the playoff teams. I knew which teams to fear when we (the Lakers) played against them, which guys to fear when they stepped on the court.

Now, if a player is under 30, most likely I don’t know him.  Even if he’s over 30, not only is it a high probability that I still don’t know him, but I most definitely can’t identify the weapons of his game.

This bubble thing, however, was so unorthodox, all of that didn’t matter.  Just getting some insight into how in the hell they were pulling this off, was draw enough for me.  So I headed on over to Matisse’s channel and checked out his videos.

I must say – fascinating. I watched every video he had posted at the time. When I was done, lo and behold, in the recommended column was a video from none other than The Lakers’ own JaVale McGee.  So I watched all of his NBA bubble videos, then next thing you know, another NBA bubble video appears from a guy named Troy Daniels, so I watched all of his too.

I enjoyed these videos so much that I actually started searching for them, see if any other players were about that vlog life. A found a few more, even, videos by a girl, a journalist named Taylor Rooks.

Now I’m hooked.

I’ll be writing more about my thoughts on the NBA bubble. But that’s all for today.