Los Angeles Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue is intimately familiar with the 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers, 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors teams with Kevin Durant.
Lue played alongside Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal on the Lakers when the team won the 2001 championship. Los Angeles also lost just one playoff game on its path to a title, with that defeat coming to the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
Plus, he served as the head coach of the Cavaliers when they won their first title in franchise history in 2016, and he coached against the Warriors in the NBA Finals when the squad had Durant. Lue picked the Lakers team he played on over the Cavaliers and Warriors squads as the best because of O’Neal’s dominance in his prime.
“Man, I just don’t see nobody beatin’ the Lakers team,” Lue said of his former squad. “When they got K.D. I gotta go back and reassess it just the — what I’m sayin’ the biggest factor is Shaq, you know what I mean? Shaq was just — no I’m sayin’ you can’t stop him. You can’t guard him. You know what I mean? And you had God rest in peace one of my guys [Dikembe] Mutombo, Defensive Player of the Year. Shaq averaged 30 what 36 whatever and 14 that series or somethin’.
“But I mean, just was no answer for Shaq. OK, say you had — you double-team Kobe or Kobe had a rough night whatever. There’s no answer for Shaq. And you could foul him, but now you got three centers playin’ the game, so now your third- and fourth-string center playin’ against Shaq because everybody else fouled out or in foul trouble. And now you’re in the bonus with six minutes to go in every quarter. It just — I just don’t see an answer for Shaq, and that’s what people don’t talk about and understand is his dominance was unmatched.”
O’Neal was an unstoppable force for the Lakers on both ends of the floor in the 2000-01 regular season. In 74 appearances, he averaged 28.7 points, 12.7 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 2.8 blocks per game.
He also shot a league-best 57.2 percent from the field and finished third in the league’s MVP voting and eighth in the Defensive Player of the Year voting.
The big man was equally dominant for the Lakers in the 2001 NBA Playoffs. He didn’t miss a single one of Los Angeles’ 16 contests and averaged 30.4 points, 15.4 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per contest during that span.
To this day, the Lakers’ playoff run in 2001 stands out as arguably the most dominant in the history of the NBA. The 2016-17 Warriors and 1982-83 Philadelphia 76ers are the only other NBA teams ever to lose one game over the course of an entire playoff run, and both of those runs ended in titles.
The Lakers’ title in 2001 marked the second year of a three-peat for Los Angeles, as O’Neal and company captured the 2002 championship as well after they swept the New Jersey Nets in the championship series.
On the other hand, the Warriors won two titles with Durant on their roster, and Cleveland didn’t win more than one championship in James’ second stint with the team despite several NBA Finals appearances. The Cavaliers made four consecutive appearances in the championship series with James leading the way.
