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

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.

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

god what an embarrassing roster lol

― k3vin k., Monday, October 12, 2020 12:18 PM (yesterday)

i assume this is about the Lakers.

i thought this, too, when they restarted. nothing but pure garbage after LeBron and AD.

but i feel like i have to eat those thoughts, man.

not every rotation guy played well every night, but one or two of them stepped up most nights, and it was not only enough, it was plenty. KCP, Rondo and Caruso looked mostly good. Morris and Kuzma had moments. Danny Green was there.

they weren't asked to do much - play hard, fly around on D and chuck up open 3s - but they did it well.

i feel like Pelinka got it right, and i definitely did not think that six weeks ago. no surprise, since he is a top executive at the Los Angeles Lakers and i am not.

Rondo played like...weirdly well, one of the strangest parts of the bubble

xpost I mean, with the exception of KCP and the young 'uns (who do not exactly impress), the whole roster after AD and Bron is basically ring chasers. So I would call it embarrassing in the sense that it doesn't have much obvious cohesion or an attractive on-court identity. But yeah, guys like Rondo and Dwight rose to the occasion and played well enough to deserve the ring.

Personally, the experience of watching teams jell (or not) over a period of a few seasons and develop those cohesive identities is one of the most satisfying and entertaining aspects of following sports. As great as it is to have "competitive balance" I'll take dynasties any day if it means we get those long arc storylines. It remains to be seen if the Lakers turn into one of those but it kind of feels like, in as far as Lebron is actually able to continue playing at this level for multiple more years, they'll just keep restocking with interchangeable supporting casts. Maybe one or two guys per year will stick and they'll start to look more like a team, I dunno. It would help if KCP had more of a discernible personality or if Kuzma were a little more likeable (or had actually had a good year).

It's been said before and may be said again... playoff Rondo is a real thing.
not sure what that says about him that he goes whole seasons and stints with teams without showing that side of himself

he's also 34, one of those guys i always think should be older than what he is, just because he won a championship when he was 22 i guess

i don't think 'vet who only gives 100% on a 1 seed team' is an archetype deserving of celebration

these guys basically exist to get the lakers more rings

It's been said before and may be said again... playoff Rondo is a real thing.
not sure what that says about him that he goes whole seasons and stints with teams without showing that side of himself

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Tuesday, October 13, 2020 1:22 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm pretty sure it says that he's completely bored by regular season basketball

I mean tbf it can't compare to the levels of strategy needed to play Connect 4

i'm pretty sure it says that he's completely bored by regular season basketball

maybe he should only be paid to play in playoff games instead of drawing paychecks for 82 games of meh and then waking up in April to see if his team ended up in the lottery because they were carrying his dead carcass

hes basically derek fisher

ok that's just disrespectful

i don't think 'vet who only gives 100% on a 1 seed team' is an archetype deserving of celebration

― ciderpress, Tuesday, October 13, 2020 1:27 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

tbf hes been good in the playoffs on lesser teams too

yeah i was exaggerating but it does contribute to lack of parity on some level when teams trying to get over the playoff hump can't rely on these guys to show up and need to look elsewhere

derek fisher has way more rings than rondo ;)