Outspoken guard Patrick Beverley has been talking a lot of trash about the Los Angeles Lakers lately, and it looks like one-time Lakers champ Kyle Kuzma has had enough.
Beverley, who played with the Lakers to start out the 2022-23 NBA season before being sent away at the trade deadline, recently stated that he and other players on the 2019-20 Los Angeles Clippers squad believe that they would have won the title that season had it not been for the NBA bubble.
Kuzma offered a quick and slicing retort by stating that the Clippers lost simply because they didn’t want to be in the bubble.
Yeah cause they didn’t want to be there lol
— kuz (@kylekuzma) March 29, 2023
Since the NBA bubble concluded back in the summer of 2020, countless debates have taken place regarding whether or not the outcome of that quarantined tournament should come with an asterisk. Of course, Lakers fans feel quite confident that their team’s 2020 NBA championship is considered just as valid as any other NBA championship.
There are even some who believe that the NBA bubble offered a unique glimpse at the pinnacle of the sport of basketball. Without fans, media and other distractions, the players could limit their focus to the game itself, thus creating a sort of ideal basketball scenario.
Clearly, Beverley seems to believe that his team was at something of a disadvantage by being forced to play in the bubble. His former Clippers teammate Paul George has readily admitted that he struggled in the bubble.
“A lot of it was just weighing on me,” George told Serge Ibaka on his cooking show. “For one, I wasn’t sleeping. I don’t know what it was. … It was probably, no lie, I probably went a good week and a half to two weeks of zero sleep, zero sleep. No lie. I would lay in bed and my mind would just be racing, racing, racing. I tried everything bro, I tried using apps, I tried therapy, sleeping gummies. … They don’t know this.”
That offers a pretty clear glimpse into what kind of complications the Clippers were dealing with in the bubble.
As for Kuzma and the Lakers, their run in the bubble seemed somewhat ideal. Led by LeBron James and Anthony Davis, the Lakers had a strong unit of motivated and veteran players who were able to maintain focus on the task at hand.
Perhaps that’s why the Lakers lost just five total games on their way to the championship.
Kuzma is no longer a member of the Lakers roster, but he will always be a member of the Lakers family. He’ll also always be an NBA champion, something that Beverley cannot yet say for himself.
