Though he hasn’t been the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers since 2022, former head coach Frank Vogel is still thinking about the team he led to the 2020 NBA title in the Bubble during the COVID pandemic.
Set to begin a new role as an assistant coach of the Dallas Mavericks, Vogel believes winning the championship with LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and others, was the highlight of his career, so far.
“It was the pinnacle of my coaching career,” Vogel said to The Athletic on following preseason Mavericks win over the Lakers. “I haven’t been back on top since, and so I just cherish the opportunity that the Lakers gave me back then with that team.”
Vogel was fired from the Lakers after the 2021-22 season, and followed that up by leading the Phoenix Suns in the 2023-24 season. After once again being let go after a disapointing season, Vogel is now on Dallas head coach Jason Kidd’s coaching staff, set to be a key piece in the Davis, Cooper Flagg, Klay Thompson, Dereck Lively, and Kryie Irving led team.
Frank Vogel On The Lakers’ 2020 Title
Vogel has heard the discussions held around his team’s 2020 title run in the Bubble at ESPN’s Wide World Of Sports complex near Disney World in Florida. With the pandemic, all teams, players, and staff weren’t forced to travel as the NBA closed out the 2019-2020 season in abnormal fashion.
With the lack of traditional circumstances surrounding the title run, as well as the inherent criticism received by James throughout his career, the championship has been deemed the ‘Bubble Title‘ with an ‘asterisk.‘ In response to those types of critiques, Vogel had a blunt response.
“I don’t really subscribe to the fact that teams that lost get to just say, ‘We didn’t want to be there.’ And the thing that sticks out to be, for all the people that want to asterisk this thing, we were the number one team from day one,” Vogel said. “Entered the bubble as the number one team in the league, the number one seed… Whether it was in the bubble or whether it was in Staples Center. We were winning that thing. We had that belief.”
Current president of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, Daryl Morey, was the latest notable executive in the NBA to call out the Lakers’ 2020 championship. Even after taking back some of his comments, Morey’s perspective on Los Angeles winning it all in the face of extraordinary circumstances is one shared around the NBA world.
“And we had to go through obstacles and delays, and go into the world’s first biosphere, to get through it,” Vogel added. “But we were gonna win that no matter what.”
The debate on the credibility of the Lakers’ championship will likely remain in dispute for years to come, especially as it relates to LeBron James’ legacy.
Brining Lessons From The Bubble To The Mavericks
Five years after winning the Lakers’ 17th title, Vogel is now set to join Kidd on the Mavericks’ bench this upcoming season. Though a team in flux, with Irving out for most of the year and Flagg entering the league as one of the highest-rated prospects in recent memory, the coach is bringing the lessons he learned from the bubble, to his new position in Dallas.
“Our team that year spent so much time together because they had to. It’s something that every team I have going forward, I’ll share what that time together meant to our connectivity, and try to be the best we can outside the bubble to duplicate that,” Vogel said.
Though he left Los Angeles unceremoniously after a 33-49 record in 2022, the NBA championship winning coach said he has already spoken to Dallas’ top stars about bringing what he learned from the Bubble, to helping the team still healing from the Luka Doncic trade in February.
“I’ve been talking to Kyrie (Irving) a little bit this year about how we had such a strong coaching staff but also the talent that we had and how the pieces fit,” he added. “We were able to do something special.”
The Mavericks have a tall task in front of them in a loaded Western Conference, but when healthy, as seen with Davis playing for Vogel in Los Angeles, the team expects to have a top-rated defense, specifically in the paint. The big men, along with Flagg’s development, and Irving’s eventual return, will be the biggest storylines following Vogel and the Mavericks this season.
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