STALLED BY THE PANDEMIC AND FIGHT VS. SOCIAL INJUSTICE – NBA FINALS, NOW UNDERWAY
The NBA 2020 season stalled by the pandemic and highlighted by the fight against social injustice culminates when the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat face off in the Finals.
The Lakers are on a mission, hoping to win their first NBA title in a decade and dedicate it to late franchise great Kobe Bryant, who led the team to their last championship in 2010.
Lakers star Lebron James, playing in his ninth finals over the last 10 seasons, eyes a fourth NBA crown as he tries to become only the third player in league history to win titles with 3 different teams.
The Heat, meanwhile, look to complete their fairytale campaign and cap it off with their first championship since 2013, back when James still starred for the franchise.
Hardly anyone picked the Heat to reach the NBA Finals, but the team led by veterans Jimmy Butler and Udonis Haslem and bolstered by young guns Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro aim to defy the odds yet again in the league’s biggest stage.
The matchup is set, with the Miami Heat and the Los Angeles Lakers emerging as the last two teams standing in the chase to be crowned champions of the most tumultuous season in NBA history.The Heat won the Eastern Conference title Sunday night, finishing off Boston a day after the Lakers won the Western Conference crown.
So, for the first time — well, excluding the league’s inaugural season — two franchises that missed the playoffs the previous season will meet in the NBA Finals. Game 1 of Heat-Lakers was played Thursday and Game 2 yesterday at Walt Disney World. James is bidding for a fourth NBA championship as well as a title with a third different franchise — and he’s about to become the first player to win a Finals MVP award with one team and then face that same team in a future championship series. His first two titles were with Miami in 2012 and 2013, the highlights of a four-year stint with the Heat that ended in 2014.
That, not coincidentally, was the last time the Heat had reached this stage. James left to return to Cleveland earlier than the Heat figured he would, Chris Bosh began his fight with blood clots — a condition that ended his career — not too long afterward and Miami descended from magnificent to mediocre in a hurry.
But now, no more. With a young core led by Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, the veteran savvy of Goran Dragic and the addition a year ago of Jimmy Butler the Heat got back to title contention quicker than probably anyone envisioned, themselves included.
Then again, Miami team manager Pat Riley — who won four championships in a seven-year span as coach of the “Showtime” Lakers — isn’t known for patience.
He thinks big. That’s why he and the Heat landed James and Bosh to play with Dwyane Wade in 2010. That’s why they got Butler in 2019, even when the team had no free-agent money to spend. That’s why they swung a deal to add Andre Iguodala, Jae Crowder and Solomon Hill in February, trading them for Justise Winslow, James Johnson and Dion Waiters; Waiters, oddly enough, ended up with the Lakers and will now face the Heat in this title series.
“To fit in here, you’ve just got to care about winning,” Butler said earlier in this playoff run. “That’s the No. 1 thing. Trying to win a championship. And we’ve got a group of guys that want that, night-in, night-out, every single day. There’s only one goal in our mind, and that’s to win it.”
The Lakers have that same goal, of course.
Their motto in these playoffs has been “Leave A Legacy,” a nod to the great Kobe Bryant — the Lakers legend who died, along with his daughter Gianna and seven others, in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26. The last Lakers’ championship was in 2010, when Bryant got his fifth and last title. James has been in the finals every year but once since. There never was a LeBron vs. Kobe finals, to the dismay of many, but in its place comes a finals trip where James and the Lakers will play with Bryant, very much in mind.
To them, in a year where a pandemic halted play on March 11 and the battle against racial inequality and police brutality led to a season that was unprecedented by all possible measures, the only fitting way to end it would be to honor Bryant’s memory with the Lakers’ 17th world title.
“We definitely know that’s what he would want,” Lakers power forward Anthony Davis said.
There’s a respect level that exists between James and the Heat to this day, even though nobody was exactly thrilled to see him leave six years ago. James’ return to Miami as an opponent was on Christmas 2014, when the Heat feted him with a tribute video that James deeply appreciated. It’s no secret that his number — 6, the one he wore in Miami — will be retired by the Heat one day. James even lauded Heat coach Fil American Erik Spoelstra on Saturday night when going through the list of “great coaching staffs” that have guided him over the years.