Dwight Howard and Hedo Turkoglu would not be like or beat LeBron and AD, they'd get mopped in 4 or 5 games lol
to be clear, i meant any team the lakers played this year. they won more games and, as much as i don't like melo, he was certainly in the range of a guy like jokic in the nba pecking order back in '09. and jokic and murray don't play D and jokic limited himself with constant foul trouble against the lakers' bigs.. dwight had some advanced stats that surpassed lebron that year. 59 wins is simply a lot higher than the nuggets 52 wins.
it’s not the Lakers fault Milwaukee and the Clippers choked back in 2015, GS faced a weak Pelicans team, a nothing special Memphis team, an injured Rockets team, and a Cavs team missing 2 of their 3 best players
i don't know what they would do, but they were both 59 win teams so it's hard to see a ton of difference. there's certainly no argument that lebron and AD were cruising in this regular season, especially since lebron wanted MVP, so they basically maximized their win total. 2009 lebron has an argument for best individual season ever and dwight beat that lebron on a 66 win cavs team. i'd certainly put money on the 2020 lakers over '09 magic, but they're in the same ballpark. if these lakers couldn't mop the injured heat in 4 or 5, i'm not sure how you see them doing it to that magic team.
it's not. doesn't change the fact it makes your path easier. just like denver beating the sonics in '94 certainly made the WCF a whole lot easier for us. not our fault, but we're all glad it happened for a reason. memphis won 55, 3 more than any laker opponent this year. the rockets won 56 and pbev was important but no moreso than bam+dragic or however much westbrook was banged up. would anybody really want to face 2015 lebron over jokic/murray for a playoff series, even with kyrie/love injured?
Because that Magic team played in a bygone era plagued by inefficient basketball, not to mention a hilariously pathetic Eastern Conference outside of the top 3. That Magic team would struggle to win 50 games in the current West, and AD would limit Prime Dwights effectiveness especially in crunch time.
GS was a 67 win team with a +10 point differential compared to this Lakers team with a +5.8 point differential the Lakers were much closer to this year’s competition than GS was to their competition back in 2015, especially with all the injury breaks they got Rockets were missing 2 starters...we were starting a 37 yo Jason Terry
Glad Lebron beat Butler. I must say though this shortened season favored Lebron. Is he going back to missing key games against probable playoff opponents next season to rest? It's not that hard to believe he is doing this at 35 when he is well rested. Not saying he is not great just pointing out the facts.
I guess if it is so easy to make it to the finals. Why didn't the clippers, nuggets, rockets, bucks or Celtics make it? I think people on the board were saying the trail blazers were going to take out the Lakers.
If an NBA owner goes broke then let him, I don't know why we're protecting the owner. The team will still be there and if he goes broke he just has to sell the team. Also if you can only have 15 active players at one time, this is again another way to limit teams. But again, at some point the Yankees had to go through an entire rebuilding because of what they did. right now small market teams are doing everything they can to hold on to thier star players that are doing nothing but gaining experience and counting the days down till they bolt to a championship team. There is no illusion to this. Small market teams rarely have a chance to win a title. Because number one they need to have free agents along with their star players to make it work. And free agents don't come to small market teams. It's very rare to see players stay with one team that small market: Dallas Houston and the Spurs have gotten lucky on that front: hakeem, Tim and dirk stayed. Very few teams have done that. Outside of texas and the power cities, la. Toronto is probably the Los Angeles of Canada and they couldn't keep kawhi. I'm so sick of seeing the NBA super teams.
that’s 100% bs. The Rockets 94’ run and team was one of the best ever. Also Jordan was in the 1995 playoffs he just got eliminated by Orlando who we swept in the finals. We would’ve taken Chicago either. He always had trouble against the Rockets.
This is definitely one of the weakest championship runs and seasons ever. Congrats to LeBron for his total asterisk title.
Memphis didn’t have Mike Conley in the playoffs. New Orleans has a hobbled Jrue Holiday off the bench. Rockets missed Bev and Dwight got injured in game 1. The warriors didn’t play against a single starting point guard in the playoffs. Pretty crazy.
Must be nice...come over to the West and one of the greatest teams decides to take the entire year off... Meanwhile the Rockets goes up against the same team for 5+ years..
The mid 70s to mid 80s Western Conference was pretty weak. 78-79 Supersonics (54 win team in a 2 50 win team Western Conference, full 82 game season) 77-78 NBA season (Only 3 50 win teams through a full 82 game season, only 1 in the Western Conference) 75-76 NBA season (Only 1 50 win team in Western Conference, a 38 win team won a division in a full 82 game season) 83-84 NBA season (Only 1 50 win team in Western Conference) 86-87 NBA season ( Lakers played a 37, 42, and 39 win team to reach the Finals).
I don't think there's an asterisk to this title anymore than there shouldn't be an asterisk to the Spurs winning it all in a lockout season. I mean they beat a 27 win 8 seeded Knicks team to win it all in a 50 game regular season. Plus if the Rockets won it all this year, many fans would defend the legitimacy of the title especially since it would be Harden's first. How many of you would tolerate some snide remark from Kerr or other NBA coaches/players that would belittle a Rockets title? Another thing is using regular season win totals to discredit the strength of the playoff teams that competed this year is misleading. There were 73 regular season games play with the last 8 treated like a dry run to see if the bubble could work long term entering the playoffs. Assuming all playoff teams mentioned had 9 more games to give an 82 game regular season and finished 5-4, the Blazers would have 44 wins, Rockets 55, Nuggets 57 and Heat 54. Not the regular season record gauntlet the 94-95 Rockets had to go through with a 60 win Jazz team, 59 win Suns team, 62 win Spurs team and 57 win Magic, but still, not the worst teams a championship team has had to best to win it all. I think the Jason Kidd Nets teams that were swept in the Finals two years in a row was worse than the Heat for instance.
