The Lakers’ 2020 championship delivered banner No. 17 to Los Angeles, yet it’s still met with lingering skepticism five years later. What players called the most mentally punishing title run in NBA history now faces quiet dismissal from league insiders.

The latest jab came from Philadelphia 76ers executive Daryl Morey. In a recent The Athletic interview, he claimed, “everyone I speak to around the league privately agrees that it doesn’t truly hold up as a genuine championship.” The comment ignited social media and drew immediate fire from those who lived it.

Phil Handy, a Lakers assistant coach during that grueling run, fired back:

“They can talk all that sh– they want. If you weren’t in the bubble to win it they may want to keep quiet about it. Every team came into the bubble to compete and win. If Houston would have beat us and won it I’m sure they wouldn’t be saying it wasn’t real lol.”

For Handy, this cuts deeper than rivalry. The Bubble wasn’t just games—it was isolation from families, erased home-court advantages, and a psychological gauntlet no NBA team had ever faced. His message stings with truth: if you didn’t survive that pressure cooker, you forfeit the right to downplay its legitimacy. And if Morey’s own Rockets had triumphed? Suddenly, that “Mickey Mouse ring” would gleam differently.

What makes Handy’s words resonate is their reframing of the narrative. The bubble was basketball stripped bare. No roaring crowds to fuel comebacks. No cross-country flights to blame fatigue on. Just raw competition in a vacuum, where mental fortitude meant everything. The Lakers didn’t stumble into glory; they outlasted everyone in a war of attrition.

The NBA’s Most Dismissed Championship Keeps Proving Its Point

The 2020 title remains the league’s easiest target, dismissed as the “Mickey Mouse championship” by detractors and labeled by Daryl Morey as a crown that doesn’t “truly hold up.” Yet this relentless skepticism overlooks three brutal truths: First, every contender faced identical conditions: no home crowds, no family access, no escape from the suffocating isolation.

Second, the Lakers didn’t just survive this pressure; they dominated, closing every series in five games or fewer while rivals like the Clippers, who blew a 3-1 lead to Denver, and Milwaukee, upset by Miami, crumbled under the mental strain. Third, the very executives now questioning its validity, like Morey, watched their teams systematically dismantled by a squad operating at peak focus. In Morey’s case, Houston lost 4-1 to the Lakers in the second round.

The Bubble didn’t lower the bar but raised the stakes instead. Without travel fatigue or crowd energy to blame, failure exposed roster flaws and fragile psyches. LeBron and AD thrived precisely because their leadership insulated the team from chaos: film sessions became therapy, empty arenas amplified communication, and the collective hunger to deliver for Kobe’s memory forged unbreakable resolve.

The Heat’s Bam Adebayo later admitted, “It’s you and your thoughts in one room, boxed in… It was like we were walking mad at everybody.” The louder the doubters shout today, the clearer it becomes. Their criticism echoes outside the fence, where the fire never tested them.