2020 NBA Bubble Ball Finals: Lakers vs Heat - Who You Got?

the champagne of low carb beers

can't believe Giannis was not the first Antetokounmpo to get a ring

can't believe Giannis was not the first Antetokounmpo to get a ring

^hearing this in Swizz Beats's voice

I begrudgingly convinced myself I'd be ok with the Lakers winning the championship when Lebron started doing great work supporting voter enfranchisement. I'm amazed by so much of his game but don't really care for his bully ball or incessant whining.

AD is forever on my shit list for how he left nola. I'm grateful that at least his ring comes with a big fat asterisk.

It doesn’t come with an asterisk sorry.

cad completely otm

― Clay

Bubble title is absolutely an asterisk

Nah

"comes with an asterix" usually always means "i don't like the team that won", modified season or not

otm

The Lakers of all franchises were literally on the championship podium begging for people to acknowledge and respect this title lmao. Disingenuous or not, when guys like TJ Warren and Jamal Murray come crashing back down to earth and the Warriors flip that #2 pick and insert themselves back into the title race next season the "Mickey Mouse ring" and asterisk takes are definitely gonna be a thing.

All I have a problem with is the bullshit "This was the toughest path to a title EVERRRRR" nonsense that some were desperately trying to push about all of this. No, resuming without a fourth of the whole league in Orlando after a 4 month break to be wined and dined by the few remaining overworked Disney World employees that weren't laid off en masse in a luxury suite in your off hours when you aren't playing in an empty gym with no travel, in front of live webcam feeds hung up on a wall with fake crowd noise piped in over the speakers is not "The toughest obstacle to a championship in sports history", sorry.

i can buy the social isolation being hard if you didnt have family there with you.

Oh cool it's trevor

I started out not liking LeBron, then he won me over, then he annointed himself GOAT, and I'm back to not liking him.

lakers were clearly the best team and will be remembered as the rightful champions... the asterisk theory is bunk

what i was thinking about tonight is how the GOAT argument would look if there wasn’t a cap spike allowing durant to sign with the warriors. we all just accept the KD warriors as like a natural part of history but it all circles back to a historical anomaly with the cap based on a decision by the union that i think is pretty agreed upon to be regrettable in retrospect. watching those warriors-cavs finals at the time it seemed pretty clear that lebron would have won at least one if KD never ended up on the warriors. he basically had 3 years of his prime wiped out by the timing of TV rights negotiations, if you wanna discuss asterisks

good post ^

Warriors' 2nd and 3rd titles have penciled-in asterisks in my mind ... in ink for KD

going to sleep happy tonight remembering that paul pierce is pissed and every possible outcome of this finals was going to end that way

i admire lebron of course but not in an "it's okay for him to get the lakers a championship" sorta way

― Clay, Sunday, October 11, 2020 7:04 PM (three hours ago)

this is the opposite for me ... i like Bron (and AD) so much, i was actively rooting for Miami to give them trouble (and extend the season) but ultimately wanted the Lakers to win. and historically, i hate them.

what i was thinking about tonight is how the GOAT argument would look if there wasn’t a cap spike allowing durant to sign with the warriors. we all just accept the KD warriors as like a natural part of history but it all circles back to a historical anomaly with the cap based on a decision by the union that i think is pretty agreed upon to be regrettable in retrospect. watching those warriors-cavs finals at the time it seemed pretty clear that lebron would have won at least one if KD never ended up on the warriors. he basically had 3 years of his prime wiped out by the timing of TV rights negotiations, if you wanna discuss asterisks

Ends up *there

LeBron has also been the beneficiary of Adventures in Cap Space though. The Heatles were a previously unthinkable phenomenon.

He kicked off the player empowerment movement he can’t be mad at anyone doing it better than he did.

That “what if” and “asterisk” mental games are a slippery slope. Lebron could easily have two less titles too if it wasn’t for the ray allen shot and the perfect storm of events in 2016.

No asterisks either. They earned it, they were the best or 2nd best team all season.

yeah but those are all things that happened on the court... unlikely events but still players deciding the game. i enjoyed the KD warriors a lot but those three championships were decided at the negotiation table

the league was essentially non-competitive for three seasons in a way that i don't think has much historical precedent... you could maybe point to the kobe/shaq three peat dynasty which has some weird origins in its own right -- magic not offering shaq the max contract (one of the stupidest decisions in nba history), kobe convincing several teams to not draft him -- but mathematically i don't think we'll never be able to see a team like the warriors again

i forget the raptors won last year lol...

xpost to be fair to Steph, Klay, Dray and Kerr, only two of their three championships were w/ KD and thus decided at the negotiation table - imo, at least. i don't think it's fair to discount 2015.

lol, now that makes sense

wait does this "Warriors 2017-2019 get an asterisk" theory *remove* the Raptors' "wouldn't have won if Klay and/or KD were healthy" asterisk?

there were three straight asterisk championships for two different reasons

i think by the time of warriors-raptors ppl were exhausted by the warriors and just happy to see someone else win but in retrospect we got robbed of seeing peak kawhi go against an end-of-their rope (for non injury reasons) warriors. he may have still been able to take them out

Lol no

every championship should have an asterisk when you think about it

No one is the champions my friend

heat spurs was the last good finals

The Lakers team bus forgot Quinn Cook at the arena so he went on JR's IG live and told them to come back 🤣

(via @TheRealJRSmith) pic.twitter.com/sthp7sjINB

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 12, 2020

asterisks are literally the dumbest sub-first take skip bayless jason whitlock horseshit

phil jackson invented the idea iirc lol

Zen master strikes again

starting to see how the lakers were able to win

https://i.imgur.com/eLWvTq5.png

to be clear, i don't really think there should be any asterisks on any championships

(but KD's are still weak)

there should be a one to four asterisks rating on each championship

denoting spice level

god what an embarrassing roster lol

bam and butler were garbage for the entire first quarter. lakers d just too good. i allowed myself to get my hopes up after game 5. but the inevitability of this was parked like a battleship on the horizon the whole time.

yup

Only asterik that is any valuable in sports is pre-1947 baseball.

Everyone else earned their freaking championship.