Remember COVID? Somehow it feels like a million years ago but also yesterday that we were all caught up in the pandemic that shut the world down in 2020. Many players were quarantined for close to three months away from their families and the outside world, and when it was all said and done, the Lakers, led by Anthony Davis and LeBron James, beat the Heat in six games to win it all.
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It was an incredible testament to the Lakers’ mental toughness that they were the last ones standing, but in the years since, many fans and so-called experts have said that the bubble title should have an asterisk on it.
Danny Green, who was on that team, thinks he knows why. Green said that if the Lakers had met the Clippers in the playoffs and the Clippers had won, nobody would be throwing the word asterisk around.
On the newest episode of No Fouls Given, he explained, “They wouldn’t call it a Mickey Mouse ring. They’d give them way more respect” if a team like the Clippers had won the title instead of the Lakers. “Because it’s Bron, because it’s the Lakers, people will find a way to hate on it.”
“That series that everybody wanted to see, if we matched up and they beat us, they would have been like, ‘Oh, fair and square, that’s what happened in the regular season.’ Even if Miami would have won, they would have been like, ‘Oh they were the best team,” Green added, noting the apparent hypocrisy.
“If Denver would have won, they wouldn’t call it a Mickey Mouse ring,” he continued, “but because the Lakers won, even though we were the best team in the f***** league that year, it was like, ‘Ah, we’re gonna discredit it.'”
Green is heated about people crapping on that ring, and deservedly so. He’s been on two other teams that won rings, so he knows how tough it is. Just because the Lakers won in different circumstances than other title teams, that doesn’t mean their ring carries less weight.
If anything, it carries more weight, because no team has had to persevere over tougher circumstances. Using that same Clippers team as an example, they folded like a cheap lawn chair because by all accounts, they didn’t want to be there. They didn’t have the same mental fortitude or the same will to win as their crosstown rivals, and as a result, they were sent packing by the Nuggets in the second round.
Does OKC’s title last year have an asterisk because Tyrese Haliburton went down in Game 7? Do the Raptors get an asterisk from 2019 because Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson went down for the Warriors? No. A ring is a ring.
Green is right that people love to hate on both the Lakers and LeBron, making this a perfect hating storm, but any objective fan has to admit that the 2020 ring counts, and should, as much as any other.
