Completely disagree. The first year of the pandemic was one of the absolute roughest stretches of my life, and I imagine that's true of just about everyone here. Winning that ring was one of the few highlights for me, and a major highlight at that. That Championship carried me for MONTHS.
Anyone who says the bubble title wasn't real is only saying it because they are cowards who are mad that the Lakers won it. Thinking about how nervous I was watching one of the best finals games Ive seen in Game 5, that title was real and the games were real and both the Heat and Lakers were playing with every fiber of their being. It was still on a regulation court, had noise like it was at a real game and the players made it real. They played it like the guys had played their whole life. It was a mix of the final four location type place with NBA players. In a lot of ways it was a nice change. The only thing I would have changed is having the Clippers not choke so the Lakers could send them home...
I was just about to say this. No one would question it if the Heat had won. Just like no one is questioning the Bucks run despite so many stars being hurt, shortened season, etc.
From Kobe’s passing to COVID that year was brutal. I loved every minute of our title run. It was a highlight of a tough year.
Yah, Brave especially. Everyone is brave in this world now. Anyone who quits, has mental health issues. Anyone who's rude for valid reasons, is out of control. So, let me clear things up so everyone can understand. You can (bleep) my (bleep) if you think the 2020 is not legit. And you can quote me on it. And, yes, I am of sound mind. More than anyone you know.
But as others have mentioned, the franchise has done nothing to show me that they can develop and nurture young talent. We’re waiving the white flag with THT as I type this. We have mishandled multiple picks and didn’t even get anything in return for guys like Randle and Caruso. The only thing separating us from the Knicks is that we got LeBron (one of the only good things Magic did). Our front office just got through breaking up a championship roster. I have zero confidence in this group building a team through the draft. Zero. Signing LeBron was a no brainer and I ship all those guys out for AD every day of the week with no hesitation. If we only get one title then so be it. Winning championships is actually really hard. Ask fans of literally any other franchise in most major sports.
I'm not saying the title wasn't real. But for me, with everything going on, I couldn't really enjoy it. For me, it was sort of something happening in the background of a massive crisis.
all this. i'd add that while we're bad at developing talent, we're very good at unearthing it. we should never try to build through the draft as a means to finding the top players on the team and rely on our scouting to fill in around the margins. yeah, i wasn't fully present, but as the postseason wore on, i did engage a bit more in it. its weirdness might make it more memorable in some ways. don't know whether to laugh or cry here. some of this is our fault (the PG tampering really hurt our stature with other teams, imo), but some of it is just plain ol' envy. the clippers get a lot of deals that i don't think would be offered to us simply because they're lifetime losers. i mean, they have cheating execs and a bloated payroll and the geographic advantage, too. they have star players who orchestrated their arrivals and vet players who came because they were friends, too. but everyone acts like we're incredibly different somehow.
Never gave the Bubble team a chance to re-run the crew. just one of the worst self made affliction a basketball team has done to itself in a long time. What makes it doubly worse is that was truly a fun team with it's own distinctive style - Great chemistry, tough defenders, not great shooting but certainly no guys you can afford to ignore on offense.
