Report: People around NBA believe Lakers didn’t win ‘genuine’ ring in 2020

The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the winningest organizations in all of professional sports. The franchise has 17 NBA titles to its name, the second-most of any team in the league behind only the Boston Celtics. However, the validity of the team’s most recent title has long been called into question.

The Lakers won the 2020 NBA title at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating people around the world. As such, the 2020 NBA Playoffs were played in a bubble at Walt Disney World, and without live fans in attendance, teams had no real home-court advantage.

Folks with NBA ties recently reflected on the NBA bubble five years after it took place, and Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey — who served as the general manager of the Houston Rockets at the time of the bubble — said that people around the league privately agree that Los Angeles’ 2020 title “doesn’t truly hold up as 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, per The Athletic. “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.”

Ultimately, the Lakers seemingly would have had a prime chance to win the 2020 championship regardless of whether that year’s playoffs were normal or not. After all, the Lakers played much of the 2019-20 regular season undisrupted by the pandemic and ended the shortened campaign with the best record in the Western Conference at 52-19.

To boot, the Lakers had a great blend of star power and depth that season. They were led by cornerstones LeBron James and Anthony Davis but had plenty of dependable complementary pieces around their stars. The likes of Alex Caruso, Rajon Rondo, Kyle Kuzma, Dwight Howard, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and others were all invaluable to the Lakers capturing their 17th title.

While there’s no denying that the Lakers won the 2020 NBA title under a not-so-normal set of circumstances, the opinions of people around the league only mean so much as the title from earlier on in this decade counts just as much as any of the team’s other 16 in the record books.

Hopefully, Morey’s words won’t change Lakers fans’ appreciation for the team’s run to a championship ring at the beginning of this decade.