based on an 82 game schedule, they beat: 1. 39 win portland team, which for good measure dame got hurt in game 4 and turned a lopsided series into a more lopsided series the last 2 games 2. 50 win rockets team, which for good measure had russell westbrook playing his worst ever off an injury and it ended up in several easy wins 3. 52 win nuggets team, arguably their highest ceiling opponent was a not-ready-for-primetime nuggets team that was as close to losing 4-1 to the jazz in the first round as competing with the lakers. 4. 49 win heat team, which for good measure had 2 fairly big injuries that made it feel like they never had a real chance in the series going back to at least 1990, i can't think of a team that faced teams with such a low ceiling. maybe a team had worse average opponents, but given their opponents had an average of 47.5 wins, and there has been a year where 48 wins didn't make the playoffs in the west, that seems unlikely? but to not have a single team that was any more than an upstart and a decent challenger is strange. upsets are fun and the team that wins the upset deserves it, but they usually make future rounds weaker. like the "we believe" warriors beating the mavs, it was great until a "meh" utah team for whom they weren't a matchup nightmare beat them soundly in the next round and we got a weak WCF out of it instead of an epic spurs/mavs rematch. i will always treasure the clippers' collapse, but they had a gear to go to that the nuggets didn't. i will treasure giannis' collapse almost as much, but they are scarier than the heat when playing well. this is such a weird title because the lakers aren't an all-time juggernaut like '96/'97 bulls, '01 lakers or '17 warriors or even a foregone conclusion team like '99 spurs, and yet they only ended up losing 5 games and basically never had a competitive series. usually lebron is hard-carrying his teams, but i don't think he shifted into high gear in until game 4 of the finals because it was simply uncompetitive most of the time.
Bro, you don’t even have to look at a different franchise to find an example. How can you forget the 09 Lakers run, when they beat us without T-Mac or Yao, then the Nuggets, then Orlando without their PG? Or the 87 Lakers. https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1987.html It’s really ok just to give LeBron his props lol
Or the Warriors in 2015. They played against Houston without Bev and Dmo and the the Cavs without Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving
'09 nuggets might be better than any team from this year and '09 magic had peak dwight and won 59 games. they would basically be like this year's lakers team. too good of a finals opponent. i stopped at 1990 because i wanted to look more at the late 80's lakers. i knew they had a season where they faced 3 terrible western teams with a combined sub-.500 record. it was 1987, but they also had to beat the '87 celtics, which was basically the last prime celtics team. even though their average opponent was a comical 44 win team, the celtics alone mean they had to bring it big time at some point to win a title. '88 might have a better case. really weak western opponents with only 1 of the 3 getting 50 wins, then a 54 win pistons team where isiah got hurt in game 6 and possibly saved them. that's probably the best case similar to this one from low win totals to injuries helping. granted, some of this is because there were only 23 teams and a 16-team playoffs made for some bad teams at the bottom (31 win spurs team in 1988). come on, i've made as many pro-lebron posts as anyone over the years in the dish. that's not what this is about.
The nba is broken when you have have 2 superstars and scrubs and win a title. But more to the point, the farm team model is so tiring at this point. New Orleans will never see the benefit of trading AD, because as soon as Zion gets mature he will do the same thing. That is why my proposal is the only way to save the nba and that is to do away with the draft, everyone is a free agent and no salary cap. The only way to beat the superstars and the blessed cities is to make them pay 200 million for an over the hill player until they are stuffed with useless contracts.
we were still a 56 win team that had just beaten a 56 win team, who themselves had already beaten a 55 win team just to get there. and even with injuries, having to face that version of lebron is more than facing jokic/murray or butler.
Jordan had some pretty weak title runs himself, he never went up against a truly great team when his Bulls were in their prime. Bad Boy Pistons, Bird and Magic where pretty much old AF by that time I believe the only great team they faced were Stockton and Malone and that team was already overmatched cuz they didn't have elite wing defenders to guard MJ and Pippen while the Bulls can throw multiple 7 footers to guard Malone in the post. BTW Jordan was only out 1 season, he was back in the league during the 2nd Rockets Title Run but his team got eliminated before they reached the Finals. It ain't the Rockets' fault if MJ couldn't get to the Finals c'mon bro.
Yeah farm team, that's why the recent winners were GSW and Cleveland, clearly huge market teams in the NBA prior to Lebron and the Splash Bros. OTH New York Knicks the greatest NBA franchise in the world and the biggest market has clearly been building a dynasty exploiting all these farm teams it has. If you do away with salary cap then the blessed cities can have 7 all stars on their team cuz they can afford it c'mon man. If you are sick of seeing the best teams win all the time then make it like March Madness and have every Playoffs be 1 loss and out, win or go home. That's the real only way to have parity by increasing the luck factor cuz even if you are the better team you can still lose in the first round.
If the Rockets had won it, it wouldn't be considered weak because they would have beaten the Lakers to do it.
Talking about wins doesn't mean anything when comparing all time eras. Hell it doesn't even mean anything when comparing teams from different conferences. Wins aren't equal, when you are beating on crappy teams then obv you'd have more wins compared to a team from a different era with different opponents. This is def on the weaker side of title run, but it isn't the weakest by a mile. For example, just last year Toronto faced a GSW team without Cousins, KD and Klay Thompson. A year before that, KD, Klay, Steph, Iguadala and Green faced Lebron with injured Irving and KLove. Statiscally Lakers had stiff competition from teams like Bucks (HISTORICAL NET DIFFERENTIAL WITH MVP?DPOY) and Clippers it ain't their fault if those teams choked. You also need to take into account the Pandemic. In the playoffs they had matches every other day so the grind was def harder for teams than it is normally. Look at how wiped out Jimmy Butler was this game dude looked like a walking dead.
because the lakers were better. not sure how that changes the fact that this was (one of) the weakest run ever.
They weren’t. They were led by Melo. Peak Dwight could be contained if you had a decent center. Gasol handled him with ease. And they were down their PG.