To some, the Los Angeles Lakers winning the 2020 NBA championship came more difficult than any other title in NBA history. To others, the Finals win in the NBA Bubble means less.
In an article by The Athletic looking back on the NBA Bubble after five years, then-Houston Rockets general manager, now Philadelphia 76ers executive, Daryl Morey gave his firm thoughts on the Lakers’ title win.
“Everyone I speak to around the league privately agrees that it doesn’t truly hold up as a genuine championship,” Morey said to Joe Vardon of The Athletic. “The champion will forever be marked by an asterisk.”
Morey’s Rockets lost in the second round of the bubble playoffs to the eventual champion Lakers, led by LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
Lakers’ 2020 Bubble Title
Ever since the Lakers won the 2020 NBA Championship, fans and analysts have debated whether it should count as a ‘real title‘ or belong in a separate category. Due to it being held during the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA held games without fans and eliminated travel for all teams.
Morey is one of the first NBA executives to directly call the title not ‘genuine‘ and seems to still hold strong feelings after James and the Lakers knocked out his team.
“Had the Rockets won the title, I absolutely would have celebrated it as legitimate, knowing the immense effort and resilience required,” Morey said. “Perhaps the lasting legacy of the NBA bubble is that the NBA should be proud of its leadership at both the beginning and end of the pandemic.”
In Vardon’s retrospective piece on the NBA bubble, he talked with other basketball journalists and people involved in the league about their thoughts on the legitimacy of the championship in what were unusual circumstances.
“There should never be an asterisk to go with the Lakers’ championship,” NBA writer Kyle Goon said.
“I believe the Lakers’ bubble title truly counts as much, if not more, than any other,” The Athletic’s Sam Amick stated.
“Some say the Lakers won a watered-down title. I say they won the toughest one to win in NBA history,” AP writer Tim Reynolds said.
Vardon himself leaned more towards Morey’s side of the argument, citing the lack of air travel and lengthy recovery time the veteran-heavy Lakers had in their Finals series win over the Miami Heat.
LeBron Doesn’t See It That Way
Regardless of Morey’s or anyone else’s perspective discrediting James’ fourth NBA title, he has yet to give that thought the time of day. In a recent episode of his podcast Mind the Game, James discussed how it was the ‘purest form of basketball‘ due to the lack of distractions.
“I agree with what a lot of people say that it was the purest form of hoops, that it was strictly basketball,” James said. “Everything in the bubble was strictly about basketball. Obviously, we were there talking about a lot of the off-the-court things with the social injustice and police brutality, rightfully so. But when the basketball portion was the focus, that’s all it was.”
In that same episode, James also discussed the ‘mental warfare‘ that was occurring in the bubble, and how it was different from the average NBA regular season or playoff game.
“There’s no escape…It’s another set of mental warfare,” James added. “Once I got there and I knew the team that we had and I knew what we was capable of, once I locked in, I was like ‘It’s survival of the fittest right now and I’m locking in. Let’s hit it.‘”
The Lakers beat the Heat in six games to win their 17th NBA title. The NBA bubble was one of the only sporting events happening in the summer of 2020, and it remains one of the most discussed titles in recent NBA history, due to its unique nature and circumstances.
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