Published by
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
By Rohan Nadkarni,Michael Pina Called into action because of the coronavirus pandemic, some of the league’s newest faces—and a few familiar names—are proving they belong. Two seasons after the bubble and one season after playing games in empty arenas, the NBA was supposed to return to a sense of normalcy in 2021–22. Instead, LeBron James took the floor on Christmas Day with Darren Collison and Stanley Johnson, while 40-year-old Joe Johnson drilled a pull-up jumper in his first game with the Celtics since 2002. The reason? In December, with the highly transmissible omicron variant making its wa…