Anthony Davis defends his 2020 championship victory with the Lakers.

Credit: Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports

Speaking on ‘The Backyard Podcast,’ NBA superstar Anthony Davis explained why nobody can discredit the Lakers 2020 championship. In a response directly to the critics of that run, Davis argued that the Lakers would have won the title regardless of the circumstances, bubble or no bubble.

“People talk about ‘aw the Lakers championship. Oh, it wasn’t real, the bubble’ But people tend to forget, we were the number one team in the league that year,” said Davis. “We had already won 12 straight. We weren’t losing games, we were 21-3 or something like that. We were running through the league. We were gonna win anyway.”

The start of the 2019-2020 campaign was like any other and the Lakers stormed out of the gate to start 21-3 with LeBron James and Anthony Davis and finished the season at 52-19. It was their first season together, and Davis’ healthiest stretch yet in the Purple and Gold (he played 62 games that season). Meanwhile, LeBron James was a few years younger back then and he was still considered among the top five players in the game with averages of 25.3 points, 10.2 assists, and 7.8 rebounds per game on 49% shooting. But when the Lakers were seemingly at their peak, the pandemic hit in full and the season was forced to stop. The Lakers came back a few months later to continue their season, but the circumstances were unlike anything they had experienced before and fans still are unsure sure how to weigh that championship compared to every other. Depending on who you ask, it was the easiest title ever and doesn’t count in the same way as all the rest. But according to LeBron and other players, that title counts as the most challenging and the Lakers deserve a lot of credit for not folding when the chaos broke loose.

LeBron James Says The Bubble Championship Was The Hardest In NBA History

The 2020 NBA championship is a highly controversial topic in the NBA community. That season brought many unique changes and challenges to the season and it involved playing through conditions that would impede any person’s ability to play and/or focus on the game. From players who experienced the bubble, we know that it wasn’t an experience that they enjoyed and some teams (like the Los Angeles Clippers) gave up their title hopes entirely just so they could get out and return home. Besides being in quarantine, players took issue with the strict visiting limitations and the conditions of their lodging not meeting the standards they were used to at home.

But even through a quarantine, with chaos happening at every corner, the Lakers never lost focus and kept their eyes on the prize until the very end. Part of the motivation came from Kobe Bryant’s death, which took place just months before the season’s hiatus. Obviously, LeBron James himself had a lot to do with it and we already know how he feels about his run that year. Looking back, however, you wanna slice it, there is no denying that the Lakers earned that championship — and given how dominant they were back when the season started, there’s no reason to think that the Lakers wouldn’t have won it all anyway had the pandemic never happened.