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

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 ;)

So I would call it embarrassing in the sense that it doesn't have much obvious cohesion or an attractive on-court identity

yeah this is what I meant, just a totally soulless, joyless team

otm

i def feel like this lakers team would get its ass kicked in a 7 game series by either of the three previous lebron title teams

I don't know... Anthony Davis is good as hell.

Like, if Lebron is covering Lebron, who's got Tony?

I guess Bosh would be pretty nice but I don't know about that Cavs team

LeBron would refuse to guard LeBron

these guys basically exist to get the lakers more rings

― ciderpress, Tuesday, October 13, 2020 10:27 AM (three hours ago)

Is this supposed to be a criticism?

no, just an observation of the lakers/lebron vet vacuums combining

i do think the east has 4 teams that could take this team down next year with some modest offseason moves, not sure about the west or whats going on with the clipper ships

pic.twitter.com/r9uXcOXcmj

— pickuphoop (@pickuphoop) October 12, 2020

those heat teams would destroy this lakers team... better/younger lebron, bosh in his prime is a good match up on AD, wade, much better role players.

after the first two games davis’ contribution was mostly on defense, he didn’t have a dominant offensive series. the idea that you need 1 player to guard him or you will lose isn’t really borne out by this series to say nothing of the rest of his career. and even with AD on the floor, the heat had a stretch of games putting up offensive ratings thar would’ve rated above the no 1 offense in the league. both those heat and cavs teams had floor stretching bigs the lack of which hurt the heat once the lakers realized they could just leave davis in the paint all game (in game 3 they put him on olynyk and the heat shredded them). lebron and AD are a great pair of players, the current league could not overcome
that, but bron’s previous title teams had legit big 3s and better role players, particularly shooters, than this lakers team.

i think olynk should have played in game 6. and herro should have played even more, when the lakers were packing the paint the heat needed a second ball handler when jimmys drive and kick game got shut down

iirc the heats roster for the 13/14 season was pretty av

i def feel like this lakers team would get its ass kicked in a 7 game series by either of the three previous lebron title teams

herro had an awful series sadly... agree w/ you about olynyk. spo prob went w/ too much of bam -- i understand why but he played like butt for most of the series and no olynyk out there allowed davis to sit in the paint for 40 mins per game

I had a challopeno popper about Duncan Robinson being a better long term piece than Herro, I might dust that off next year

i mean really there were no adjustments in game 6 that would have covered for butler and the heat expending absolutely everything they had to win game 5.

it's funny to talk about herro as if there is any sort of established baseline for him...he's really young and has had a lot of peaks and valleys in performance already. i don't think we have any idea what he is beyond an intriguing talent who has had a few flashes.

well duncan robinson is 26 and herro is 20

when you talk about huge beneficiaries of the bubble, robinson and herro go to the top of the list for me as rookies who got to play four playoff series w/o having to ever handle the ball or shoot in front of a road playoff crowd.

that having been said i thought both played above expectations... robinson held up far better than most ppl thought and was basically the second best player for them in the finals which is pretty crazy and explains why they lost but he also had a few huge games and wasn't overwhelmed physically in a series w/ a bunch of grown ass dudes, which was my major concern. herro was a borderline revelation, the stuff he was doing as a ball handler, finishing at the rim, passing out of the pick and roll... we did not see any of that in the regular season. he was having big problems finishing over anyone and then in the bubble was like dropping and 1 mixtape lay ups on anthony davis and jayson tatum. to me the question is how much further he can push it, dan le batard said on zach lowe's pod a little bit ago that the heat think he can be better than devin booker. personally i see him as more of a supercharged lou williams type, a second unit monster who can singlehandedly win games but w/ the added benefit of having a modern killer three point/step back arsenal in his game. there's a pretty decent gap between sixth man of the year and devin booker so we'll see which end he lands closer to