The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com's weekly, obviously, column covering Purdue football, basketball and recruiting, as well as college sports issues, the true meaning of life, or whatever other topics might come to mind in a given week.

So the other night the Denver Nuggets had their collective cardiac apparatus callously extracted from their beings by Anthony Davis' buzzer-beater, putting the Los Angeles Lakers up 2-0 in the NBA's Western Conference finals.

In such situations, a team might remind itself that at least its home floor awaits, a modest consolation amidst difficult circumstances. Not this year, the NBA's Bubble — masterfully orchestrated to the point a memorable season's been born from the ashes of March and the months that followed — is static.

There is no home crowd. There is no crowd, period. The beds players wake up are the same beds they've occupied every night for months now.

There's no homecourt advantage, nor any road-team disadvantage.

It just is.