Los Angeles Lakers: How their 2020 team compares to other recent champions

The final word on the Los Angeles Lakers 

NBA fans, and really just people in general, are very visual. In a basketball sense, it’s why fans and even teams will misjudge players. They overvalue players who have a visually satisfying game and undervalue players who play with less grace. At a team level, I think the 2020 Lakers will suffer from this because, well, they weren’t pretty.

In an era of small ball and hoisting up 3’s, they went big and won games by defending, rebounding, and living in the paint on offense. Or to frame it in a different way – they won ugly. And in an era where every team is obsessed with building a “Big 3,” the Lakers won a championship when their third-best player was an ever-fluid Rajon Rondo/Kentavious Caldwell-Pope tandem.

In a city known for the Showtime era, this group won by being anything but that. And when you compare them to the other NBA champions of this century, the numbers don’t paint them as anything better than the middle of the pack.

I don’t know how many of the other 20 teams they would beat in a series, but after watching them coast through this year’s playoffs with bully ball and elite defensive versatility behind the leadership of debatably the greatest player to ever live, I’d bet that none of those 20 teams would be excited to see them seven times.