"Normal is an illusion," said legendary cartoonist Charles Addams. "What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly." Life in 2020, subsumed under the euphemism, "the new normal," is nothing if not chaotic, even for eight-legged arthropods whose interests include weaving and entomology. Just ask Donovan "Spida" Mitchell, the Utah Jazz fan favorite who leapt to fame when he won the 2018 NBA Dunk Contest as a rookie. How did the 23-year-old shooting guard get the nickname "Spida"? "One of my former teammates' dads called me spider, and it just stuck," he explains. (It might have had something to do with the 6'1" Mitchell, four inches shorter than the average NBA shooting guard, possessing a sprawling 6'10" wingspan, but this is purely conjecture.) Now, Mitchell is putting his imposing reach to use in another sphere: the "bubble," an experimental format for the 22 NBA teams still in playoff contention. Following strict COVID-19 protocols, the NBA season will resume in a lockdown environment at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Mitchell is all too familiar with the gravity of COVID-19. He and teammate Rudy Gobert were the first NBA players to test positive for the virus, leading the NBA to shut down the regular season on March 11. He and Gobert have since recovered, but the deadly pandemic rages unabated. Among the 113 pages of rules for players, coaches and staff in the bubble was a specific prohibition against playing doubles ping-pong. Unfazed, the solo Mitchell declared himself on Twitter to be the "Best ping pong player in the bubble." To support this claim, Mitchell provided video of him trading weak backhands with an unseen opponent, then crushing a hanger with a furious forehand. He punctuates the routine putaway with a primal scream as if he had just hit the game-winner in game 7 of the NBA finals. Mitchell gets credit for respecting the ban on doubles, but his irrationally exuberant post-point screams threaten to spew droplets far beyond the imaginary six-foot bubble surrounding players in the giant imaginary bubble they currently inhabit. He, of all people, should know better. Furthermore, Mitchell's claim of table tennis supremacy is tenuous at best. The evidence offered is the digital equivalent of an anecdote, devoid of meaningful context, let alone any structured competition. Could Mitchell claim to be the NBA champion after making one negligibly defended dunk in practice? Regardless of the legitimacy of such bragging rights, Donovan Mitchell's enthusiasm for table tennis is admirable. This is good news for fans of the Utah Jazz, surely relieved to see their young superstars Mitchell and Gobert healthy again after falling victim to the coronavirus. For Donovan Mitchell, as for all of us, normal is an illusion. Still, it is better to be the "Spida" than the fly, attacked like a hapless ping-pong ball that just so happens to happen by.

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