The NBA bubble provided either the hardest championship to win of all-time, or a fraudulent title that doesn’t carry as much weight as every other ring depending on who you ask. On Wednesday, to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the start of the bubble, Joe Vardon of The Athletic wrote a piece that asked the people who lived inside the Orlando facility to reflect on their experience and how to look back at the season.
Daryl Morey took the opportunity to run with the idea that the Lakers championship deserves an asterisk, and the writer of the story seems to agree with him.
Morey was running the Houston Rockets back in 2020, and they were eliminated in the second round of the bubble playoffs by the Lakers. Morey’s super small ball team led by James Harden and Russell Westbrook was no match for the LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and an elite defense, and the series ended in only five games.
The Lakers would defeat the Nuggets in the five games in the next round, and then beat the Miami Heat in six games in the NBA Finals. According to Morey, people around the league don’t view it as a legitimate championship.
When asked if the Lakers bubble championship deserves an asterisk, here’s what Morey said:
Morey: Had the Rockets won the title, I absolutely would have celebrated it as legitimate, knowing the immense effort and resilience required. Yet, everyone I speak to around the league privately agrees that it doesn’t truly hold up as a genuine championship. 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, even though the champion will forever be marked by an asterisk.
Morey saying the championship would have counted if his team won it, but it doesn’t count since the Lakers won it, is absolutely incredible. I have no notes. This is just as good as when Morey audited the 2018 Western Conference Finals and concluded that the Rockets were robbed by the officials.
Vardon, who has been covering the NBA for decades and lived inside the bubble as a reporter himself, lended credibility to Morey’s theory by saying the Lakers championship deserves a “yeah, but …” attached to it.
Vardon: Everyone played by the same rules, and the Lakers were a great team that year anyway. While I echo what my colleagues say about the difficulty of winning the bubble playoffs, I do have a “Yeah, but…” One of the hard parts of the postseason is the air travel — especially on older players because of their recovery times. LeBron took one flight in three months, and I don’t know what to do with that. Everyone in the Lakers played against in the bubble had the same set of circumstances, but when comparing the 2020 champs to preceding and succeeding champions, the Lakers and their aging vets didn’t have to play a game, get on an airplane and play another game within 48 hours.
The Lakers championship was certainly different, but that doesn’t mean it was fraudulent. I covered the whole thing from my couch for this fine website, and never once did I think the Lakers’ title deserved an asterisk. It’s possible the lack of travel did benefit the Lakers, but everyone played under the same conditions, and the Lakers were clearly the top team. I don’t think travel would have changed that, because the Lakers were awesome all year.
The 2020 Lakers had 52 wins, third-most in the NBA, when the season paused for the pandemic. The Bucks — with Eric Bledsoe! — were the top team with 56 wins, followed by the Raptors. Do you really believe Milwaukee would have won the title that season with travel? I don’t. They needed the Jrue Holiday trade before they could break through the next year. That Raptors team lost fair and square to the Celtics in Game 7 of the second round, and they just weren’t special without Kawhi Leonard.
The Lakers had the best team in 2020. Yes, LeBron may have benefitted the lack of travel, and Davis certainly benefitted as a shooter from the backdrop, but LA still had two top-5 players and a team full of elite role players around them. Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope would become key rotation players on other championship teams in the years to follow, and they were really good for LA.
The Lakers’ bubble championship is real. Still, it’s hard to stand up for the Lakers because they carry so much prestige. They are by far the most popular team in the league, and they somehow fall into superstars every single decade. Hating on the Lakers isn’t just fun, it’s an obligation for the rest of us suckers who root for teams with less exceptionalism.
Morey’s comments are hilarious, and I applaud him for giving me something to blog about at the end of July when nothing else is happening. I just can’t agree with him.
