The Los Angeles Lakers have returned to the heights of American basketball, a few months after losing their former glory, Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash in late January. Sunday, October 11 (the night from Sunday to Monday in France), LeBron James and his teammates crushed the Miami Heat (106-93), winning their fourth game of the series, synonymous with the NBA title. The 17the of the California franchise, making it the league’s most sacred, tied with the Boston Celtics. In the “bubble” of Disneyworld (in Florida), where the longest season in the history of the NBA ended – an interruption linked to the coronavirus requires – the Lakers let their joy burst out.
The wait was long for the purple and gold club. For ten years, and their double in 2009 and 2010, they have crossed a desert to which the team is hardly accustomed. After three consecutive eliminations in the first round of the playoffs – the finals in American sport – they did not even participate in the next six. Unheard of for a franchise that had missed them only five times in its history and only twice since 1976. Even the providential arrival in 2018 of superstar LeBron James, playing all the finals since 2006, has not enough.
To ensure that the scenario does not repeat itself this season, the Lakers did not hesitate to go all-in to bet everything on Anthony Davis, star winger with too big an ambition for the “small market” that is New Orleans, and the perfect complement, on paper, to LeBron James. Aware that the Lakers were desperate to bring the two men together – who also share the same agent, Rich Paul – the New Orleans Pelicans have made them pay a heavy price. In exchange for their star, they negotiated the arrival in Louisiana of three of the four greatest prospects of the Angelinos (Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart), as well as four rounds of draft – the “market” allowing the young players to. join the NBA.
The franchise has failed to attract a third star in its golden nets, to form a “Big Three”, a recipe that has worked in several teams – the Miami Heat of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, or the Boston Celtics of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. But the Los Angeles team has supplemented its roster with veteran and experienced players: half the squad is over 30 years old, and the average age is the highest in the league. The Lakers have also forged a defensive identity with the arrival on the bench of Frank Vogel, which took them from the eleventh to the third best defense in the regular season, according to the statistics put forward.
New award-winning model
But the success of the Lakers is also the coronation of a new model. This is the first time that a franchise has been crowned champion without counting in its workforce a basketball player who has been present for several years, to which supporters have been able to become attached, as the journalist Bill Simmons reports in his podcast. Twelve of the eighteen players in the squad were not there last season. The two oldest, Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, arrived in 2017.
“Even when Miami won with Chris Bosh and LeBron James in 2012 and 2013, they had Dwyane Wade, who had been there since 2003. It’s the first team worthy of a working fantasy team.”, launches Bill Simmons, evoking these virtual sports leagues where you win by accumulating stars. However, the Lakers are far from being the only representatives of this trend: in addition to a city, they share this characteristic with the Los Angeles Clippers, other big favorites for the title whose ambitions were dashed this year in the semifinals of western conference facing Denver. “This is the direction the NBA is taking today, Simmons continues. In a few years, when we look back, we will think that the Lakers were the first team assembled on short contracts that suddenly won a title. “
Presented as one of the favorites from the start of the season, the Lakers are using their own words ” on a mission “, since January and the death of Kobe Bryant. This drama particularly marked the Angelinos, who only thought of winning this title to dedicate it to him. “He inspired everyone on this team, Anthony Davis explained before the finals. Everyone has been marked by Kobe in one way or another. We want him to be proud of us and we have four games to win for that. “
LeBron James has won his bet. Landed in California from his stronghold of Cleveland with the ambition to restore the image of a “Mythical franchise”, it only took two years for the one who pushes back the records one after the other to win his fourth title. And a fourth MVP (best player) trophy of the finals, with three different franchises. Despite the interruption of the season, linked to the coronavirus epidemic – the NBA was one of the first leagues to stop its activities -, and three months spent in the “bubble” – finally waterproof – of Disneyworld Orlando, the Lakers are back on top.
