LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Before I can so much as press my nose against the glass of the NBA bub­ble for a peek inside, it’s required that I have a cot­ton swab do a 360-degree dunk in both my nostrils.

Bright and ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing, imme­di­ate­ly after anx­ious­ly chug­ging a cup of cof­fee, I got a COVID-19 test. Not because I felt sick, but so I could the Nuggets play basketball.

Full of up-my-nose-with-a-rub­ber-hose trep­i­da­tion while await­ing the swab probe, I’m now almost embar­rassed to say: There was no pain, no fuss. It was quick and easy-peasy. I went into this test fear­ing a frontal lobot­o­my and escaped with a light dusting.

As I depart­ed the makeshift med­ical clin­ic in the ball­room of a lux­u­ry hotel, a smil­ing woman assured me the test results would be effi­cient­ly for­ward­ed to an app on my cell phone in approx­i­mate­ly 24 hours, well in time to be grant­ed admis­sion to Game 2 of Denver’s play­off series against Utah on Wednes­day afternoon.

“Thanks so much for your help,” I replied.

Then I walked out­side to bask in the bright Flori­da sun­shine illu­mi­nat­ing a per­fect­ly man­i­cured golf course, while tak­ing a deep breath of the soft, humid air … and I imme­di­ate­ly came down with a bad case of guilt reserved for a priv­i­leged few in a year when the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has killed more than 170,000 peo­ple in the Unit­ed States.

The NBA’s mon­ey and pow­er has allowed play­ers, coach­es and jour­nal­ists to jump to the front of the line for coro­n­avirus testing.

“I thought about that today,” coach Michael Mal­one told me after the team’s work­out in the bub­ble, where the NBA has done an amaz­ing job of keep­ing every­body healthy.

“I’ve been here now for 42 days. We get test­ed every sin­gle day, which is a big part of the abil­i­ty to sus­tain the bub­ble and make it a safe envi­ron­ment. But I was think­ing about how many peo­ple don’t have access to tests, how many peo­ple need a test and maybe can’t get it.”

When it’s far eas­i­er for Lak­ers super­star LeBron James or an ink-stained wretch like me to obtain the peace of mind from a reas­sur­ing COVID-19 test result than the guy who stocks super­mar­ket shelves with cans of beans, it feels wrong.

It feels like maybe our coun­try is messed up because we pri­or­i­tize enter­tain­ing the mass­es over doing the hard, nec­es­sary work for Amer­i­ca to beat this dead­ly virus.

Six months into the pan­dem­ic, we’ve ramped up to approx­i­mate­ly 750,000 tests per day in the U.S., caus­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to lament that more test­ing leads to more cas­es, claim­ing in a recent inter­view with Axios: “You know, there are those that say you can test too much.”

But accord­ing to a recent study led by researchers from Har­vard Med­ical School and blunt­ly titled “Fail­ing the Test,” a nation­wide sur­vey found a short­age of sup­plies caused the aver­age wait time for test results in the month of July to be four days — too slow to be effective.

“It’s like hav­ing no test­ing,” Cal­i­for­nia ortho­pe­dic sur­geon Amir Jamali told The New York Times.

OK, to be fair, not all the news on test­ing is bad.

The NBA deserves praise for assist­ing the devel­op­ment of a new sim­ple and pain­less sali­va test approved this week by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion for peo­ple with­out coro­n­avirus symptoms.

For hard-work­ing peo­ple in Orlan­do not paid mil­lions to drib­ble a bas­ket­ball, there’s free test­ing pro­vid­ed dai­ly in the park­ing lot of the city’s con­ven­tion cen­ter. As light­ning flashed and rain began to fall Tues­day after­noon, the wait for test­ing was not appre­cia­bly longer than the line at the dri­ve-through win­dow at a McDonald’s across the street.

Make no mis­take, though. When you need a COVID-19 test, it’s good to ride the coat­tails of King James and his fel­low NBA stars.

So here’s empa­thy for col­lege stu­dents stuck in a line around the quad, wait­ing to prove they pose no health risk to the gen­er­al stu­dent body, as out­breaks hit cam­pus­es from North Car­oli­na to Notre Dame. I entered the league’s impec­ca­bly staffed test­ing site at 8:36 on a sum­mer morn­ing, got reg­is­tered in the sys­tem with­out lift­ing a fin­ger, did a sweet lit­tle dance with the cot­ton swab and was on my way to break­fast by 8:45.

Know what? By NBA stan­dards, I was slow.

In this league, get­ting a COVID test is less has­sle than flossing.

“I lit­er­al­ly go to my ele­va­tor, hit a but­ton and walk down stairs. I’m in and out in a mat­ter of two min­utes. It’s very easy, very con­ve­nient,” Mal­one said

“Yes it is a part of a new nor­mal life to make sure you get test­ed. But I often won­der: We in the NBA, how priv­i­leged we are, to pro­vide enter­tain­ment for peo­ple all over the world, but a lot of peo­ple don’t have access to the same test­ing that we do … I just wish every­body had access to the same test that we do.”