Anthony Davis didn't hold back his thoughts when addressing the criticisms towards the Los Angeles Lakers' 2020 championship, more popularly called the “bubble championship.”
Lakers' bubble championship hate
The Lakers won their first (and so far only title) in the LeBron James era when they won the Larry O'Brien trophy in the 2020 championship. However, many have been calling it as a fake championship since it came under special circumstances. For one, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the season had to be suspended before being cut short, with the NBA deciding to have a seeding game to determine who would make the playoffs.
Moreover, amid the pandemic, the NBA decided to hold the season restart in Disney World in Orlando. The decision meant that teams would be playing in neutral grounds, with the top teams losing the advantage of playing on their homecourts. There were also a number of players backing out of the season restart due to the global health issue.
Considering all those factors, many critics have shared their stance that the bubble championship isn't legitimate. Of course another reason for that buzz is because LeBron James and the Lakers won it, with several of LeBron's critics simply trying to tarnish his legacy by discrediting the title win.
In response to all the buzz that has followed their championship run, Davis recently responded to all the hate that their win has been getting, noting that they would have won anyway regardless of the circumstances. After all, they were one of the top teams in the league before it was suspended.
“People talk about ‘aw the Lakers championship. Oh, it wasn’t real, the bubble'… We were running through the league. We were gonna win anyway,” Davis explained on The Backyard Podcast.
Why the Lakers' bubble championship counts
To be fair to Anthony Davis, the Lakers were indeed on path to the championship during that time. They were dominating the West, and the fact that they finished the season with a 52-19 record speaks volumes on how unstoppable they were. Only the Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors had a better record than them at 56-17 and 52-19, respectively.
Furthermore, it's worth pointing out that many players have said that winning in the bubble is actually the hardest because of how weird the situation is. Despite that, the Purple and Gold held on and got the job done. Damian Lillard said it best when he expressed his belief that the 2020 bubble ring counts, highlighting that it's unfair to criticize the Lakers for winning it when everyone was given the same opportunity.
“I think it counts to me. Why don't it count? Nobody else won it. Everybody else had the same opportunity to win it, so why didn't they win it?” Lillard said of the bubble in a September 2023 interview. He added, “The physical part, everybody was fresh. That's why you see dudes hooping like that, ‘coz there was nothing else [to do]. That will make it harder to win it all,”
Regardless of what the critics are saying, Davis, James and the rest of the Lakers can certainly be proud of what they have accomplished. It's unlikely the critics will ever stop from trying to discredit them for the accomplishment, but at the end of the day, everyone else in the NBA know they won it fair and square.
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