Ever since the Los Angeles Lakers won the 2020 NBA title in the bubble at Disney World, people have debated where it stands in the hierarchy of recent NBA championships.
Because the bubble was so unique, and because it was LeBron James and the Lakers who came out on top, that title has become fodder for debates about asterisks. It’s the easiest way to rile up LeBron stans and the Lakers’ fan base, but apparently those conversations about the Lakers’ 2020 championship extend beyond sports debate TV and fans trolling online.
As part of a look back at the bubble five years later, Philadelphia 76ers executive Daryl Morey poured more gasoline on the fire this week by telling The Athletic that no one around the NBA believes it’s a “genuine championship.”
“Had the Rockets won the title, I absolutely would have celebrated it as legitimate, knowing the immense effort and resilience required,” Morey said. “Yet, everyone I speak to around the league privately agrees that it doesn’t truly hold up as a genuine championship. Perhaps the lasting legacy of the NBA bubble is that the NBA should be proud of its leadership at both the beginning and end of the pandemic, even though the champion will forever be marked by an asterisk.”
This would probably hold more weight coming from an executive who has won a championship themselves, but instead it comes off as sour grapes and will mostly only serve to get Morey roasted online — which is, at this point, a near annual tradition.
The bubble was, undoubtedly, one of the strangest things in pro sports history, but the level of basketball that was played in Orlando that year was also outrageously high. To question whether it’s a “genuine championship” as an active GM of another team is truly wild. That’s especially the case for a GM who has a reputation for building teams that come up short of expectations — in both normal years and seasons that finish with supposed asterisks.
