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The Lakers fell face-first in this season of the NBA. Just around 20 or so months after winning an NBA championship, the Lakers failed to qualify for the play-in tournament. They ended their season as the 11th seed which concluded their worst season in recent times. In fact, it was one of the worst seasons of their history. Despite a quality season individually from LeBron James, the Lakers in no way did any justice to that.

Frank Vogel had his first season with the Lakers behind closed doors because of Covid-19 restrictions. He led them as their head coach in 2020. The Lakers won the NBA championships without fans in the arena. However, there are people who ‘discredit’ that season just because the pressure to perform because of the unavailability of fans was less. Patrick Beverley is one of those people.

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JJ Redick praised the Lakers for the talent they had which won them the championship. Pat Bev interrupted in between and kind of decreased the value of that title-winning run.

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JJ said, “They had a treasure trove of young players and assets. They put them all on the table to get Anthony Davis and they won a championship like….” Pat Bev interrupted and said, “Bubble championship”. At this Redick told Patrick that there could be many title-winning runs where the “asterisk” could be put next to the teams over the injuries to the rivals, circumstances, and luck involved on the way. The two went into a small to and fro argument about the same.

NBA Fans react to Patrick Beverley’s dismissal of LeBron James’ Lakers winning NBA in 2020

Pat Bev made it seem very clear that he did not value the 2020 NBA-winning run of the Lakers. He faced some backlash from LeBron‘s fans whereas there were fans who did not disagree with him.

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Although of course, the pressure was less on the Lakers due to no crowd that was the same for every other team as well. The situation was dire at the time and the world was not normal. Whatever ‘luck’ Lakers had could have been someone else’s.

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WATCH THIS STORY: When LeBron completely lost his cool at Pat Bev.

Similarly, if a team was missing key players and were not full strength then again Lakers could have been ‘unlucky’ in that way. All in all the situation was not normal, it was all new, and each team was going through it. So discrediting the Lakers for that NBA championship does not seem to do justice to that difficult time.