Daryl Morey: People across NBA say Lakers' 2020 title isn't 'genuine'
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019-20 season was delayed and then resumed in Florida with no fans in attendance and no travel to deal with during the playoffs. In an article in The Athletic that looked back at the 2020 playoffs, Philadelphia 76ers executive Daryl Morey said that people around the league don't take the Lakers' world title seriously.
"Had the [Houston] 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."
In 2020, Morey was the general manager of the Rockets, a team that had finished with the fourth seed in the Western Conference and were thought to have a puncher's shot at winning it all. But L.A. put them away easily in five games during the second round of that year's playoffs.
L.A. held a 3-1 series lead in each round of the 2020 playoffs and didn't have to deal with much, if any, drama throughout. Prior to the breakout of the novel coronavirus in the United States, the Lakers had burst out to a 24-3 record and were starting to look like the best basketball team in the world by the winter solstice.
Contrary to what Morey said, others, including a few journalists who were interviewed for that piece in The Athletic, said that not only was the Lakers' 2020 championship legitimate, but that it was one of the toughest championships ever won. The difficulty factor was due to the stringent health and safety restrictions the league imposed that aimed to keep the coronavirus from creeping into the bubble.
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