Phil Handy reacts to bubble disrespect: ‘They can talk all that s—t they want’

Five years after the 2020 NBA bubble transpired, Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey had some controversial words about the perception of the Los Angeles Lakers’ championship run that year. He said that people around the NBA privately believe that the team’s title “doesn’t truly hold up as a genuine championship.”

Morey, who was with the Houston Rockets during the bubble, did clarify that if Houston had won the title, he “absolutely would have celebrated it as legitimate, knowing the immense effort and resilience required.”

Dallas Mavericks assistant coach Phil Handy served as an assistant under former Lakers head coach Frank Vogel when L.A. won the 2020 title, and he issued a reaction to the negative perception of the bubble ring.

The 2019-20 campaign marked Handy’s first with the Lakers’ coaching staff, though he already knew what it took to win a title at the highest level before he reached the mountaintop with Los Angeles. He joined the Lakers as a two-time champion as an assistant before winning his third with the Purple and Gold.

The 2020 NBA Playoffs were a different beast in that there weren’t fans cheering in the stands and teams didn’t travel for home and away games, but it’s not clear that a normal postseason format that year would have resulted in a different champion being crowned.

After all, the Lakers were utterly dominant throughout the 2020 NBA Playoffs and handily defeated every one of their four opponents on the way to a ring. First, the Lakers beat the Portland Trail Blazers, Rockets and Denver Nuggets in five games each in the opening three rounds of the playoffs.

Then, in the championship series, the Lakers had a 3-1 series lead over the Miami Heat at one point in time, and they later eliminated Miami in six games. All in all, the Lakers earned that title fair and square regardless of all of the unique circumstances, and folks shouldn’t be so quick to belittle the accomplishment.