Professional Athletes Trade Sports for TikTok and Toilet Paper

the day in (no) sports Giannis Antetokounmpo is playing guitar, among other things you didn’t expect to read about in the middle of March. Another Monday, another week of global pandemic news, social distancing, political wrangling and no sports. Well, it depends how you define “sport” in this brave new world. Athletes have gotten creative as they try to stay healthy and fill their days.

Star athletes, they’re just like us. Really bored. Back during the 1918 flu pandemic, we had no way of knowing what Babe Ruth or Jack Dempsey were up to in their spare time. Thanks to social media, we do now.

Barcelona center back (and Shakira’s partner) Gerard Piqué would have been expecting to play in a home game against Leganés over the weekend. Instead, he was bouncing a roll of toilet paper off the edge of his tennis racket as many times as he could. He got to 20. How many can you do?

Let’s be honest, you’ve probably got the time. A variant is the Toilet Roll Challenge, in which players use their feet to keep a roll in the air. As you might expect, Lionel Messi does it with some flair. JaVale McGee also got in on the kicking action, but with a faked animated toilet roll.

Let’s credit Messi also with some constructive non-toilet-paper-related activity. He is one of two dozen players involved in a World Health Organization campaign to push best practices to fight the coronavirus. “Avoid touching your face, particularly your eyes, nose or mouth to prevent the virus from entering your body,” he says. Hmm, pretty basic advice, but we’ll take it over the tip from the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, who said, “We need teamwork to combat the coronavirus.

” Of course, this all raises a question: Where did they get their hands on toilet paper? Giannis Antetokounmpo is clearly not a professional guitarist, but he managed to pluck out “Smoke on the Water” to pass the time. Also, LeBron James did a TikTok dance. He certainly can’t play basketball in Hudson County, N.