The rules for bringing guests into the NBA bubble specifically prohibit visits from people players know only from social media.
When the NBA announced that guests would be allowed inside the league’s Disney World bubble beginning with the second round of the playoffs, a lot of people began asking the same question: What about hookups?
It’s no secret that players enjoy the company of women when they’re on the road, and it’s even easier in the digital age to find a nice lady to spend the night with. One player told ESPN in 2017 that players can get “at least two hours more sleep” if they’re bumping uglies on the road these days because sliding into Instagram DMs eliminates the need to go out to a club to meet women.
But there will be none of that in the bubble. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the NBA circulated a memo on Wednesday morning outlining the procedures for bringing guests into the league’s Disney World campus. Family members (including children) and friends will be allowed to enter the bubble after a seven-day quarantine period, with each team allotted 17 hotel rooms. But the league has also codified what constitutes a “friend.”
For non-family members to enter the bubble, players will have to prove “long-standing relationships.” The memo doesn’t explicitly prohibit DM sliders from the bubble, but you can read between the lines when it says those “known by the player only through social media or an intermediary” aren’t allowed.
Last month, right around the time players began arriving in the bubble, a woman named Anna Maya with over 20,000 Instagram followers tweeted that she’d been invited to the campus by an unnamed player. Clippers forward Montrezl Harrell even came out to say it wasn’t him. Who knows if she was telling the truth, but even if it was true, it’s not going to happen.