Every year, the NBA ecosystem attempts to assign some sort of asterisk to that year’s champion, and 2025 will be no different. This year’s champion, the Oklahoma City Thunder, will face accusations that their title is tainted by Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton tearing his achilles tendon in the first quarter of Game 7, but chances are that even with that context in the game that literally decided the series, it still won’t be the most controversial championship in recent NBA history.
That honor will (likely) always go to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020, as many over the years have tried to call their NBA Bubble triumph “Mickey Mouse” and dismiss it as less than a real championship, a stance was only emboldened by Thunder guard (and 2020 champion) Alex Caruso saying in the aftermath of Sunday’s OKC triumph that no one could say that he didn’t have a real ring anymore:
Now, anyone who watches the video clip can (probably) tell that Caruso was just showcasing the same signature dry wit he’s displayed throughout his career, but it didn’t stop the remark from creating headlines across the internet, and sparking discourse all over social media — as evidenced by how many replies to the above tweet were using it as an excuse to dismiss the Lakers’ 17th title.
The next day, Caruso felt that he had to clarify that he was joking. And in a rarity for a celebrity, you can tell this wasn’t a carefully crafted statement ghostwritten by a public relations staff, because he gave just about the funniest excuse possible:
He also may be underselling it, as — given that as the only Thunder player to have previously won a title — he had to teach his young teammates how to open a champagne bottle. So it stands to reason he may have had a few sips of that as well, and hey, after a hard-fought, seven-game series victory, who could blame him?
However, whether Caruso is joking or not — and as someone who covered almost his entire journey from G League standout to ultimate NBA role player, I think it’s fairly obvious he was — it’s also not really debatable that the Lakers’ championship was different from any other title in NBA history. Played in a bubble at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and after a multi-month layoff, it’s not even a debate that there has never been a championship run exactly like it.
But different doesn’t mean lesser. The playoffs weren’t going to be played in home arenas that year, and even the 2021 postseason was played in mostly partially filled stadiums due to health and safety protocols. There was just no scenario where the NBA was going to shut down long enough to have a playoffs exactly like all others in history.
The Lakers still won the title, though, despite losing out on the homecourt advantage they’d played hard all year for, and amidst the same circumstances that literally every single other team had to face. You can say the cirumstances were an advantage for them, but that ignores that every other team had the same “benefit.” And if you’re saying that it’s a lesser title because they got rest before the run and didn’t have injuries, you’re saying that you’re more interested in who can get the best random health luck than who is the best basketball team that played the best all year.
Yes, the Lakers got a few months off and didn’t have to travel in the bubble, but the same was true for all of their opponents. One could even argue that 2020 is really the least gimmicky championship ever, given that the rest meant nearly every team was at top health, no one was fatigued from travel, and there were no outside factors like raucous home crowd, quick travel turnarounds and only one team per game having to deal with hotel beds.
We’ll never know for certain if the Lakers would have won otherwise, but the same is true for all champions: You can only play against the opponents and circumstances in front of you. All we do know for sure now is that Alex Caruso can win in either scenario, and that maybe the real asterisk on the 2025 title is whether or not the Thunder would have won it if the Lakers and Bulls weren’t both so stupid.
