Lakers To Make First NBA Finals Appearance in 10 Years VS Heat

After seeing off the Denver Nuggets, the Lakers will make their first NBA Finals appearance in ten years.

For the Lakers, it is the stage upon which they feel they belong. However, it’s been a long road back there after a troubling decade.

After back to back Championships in 2009 and 2010, no one would have believed that LA would fall from grace. 

Fall from grace is exactly what they did, though, in a decade of failed experiments. The Warriors dynasty rose and fell in that time. The Lakers failed to make the playoffs in six straight seasons after a 2013 flamout at the hands of San Antonio.

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Los Angeles needed to do something drastic to return to their former heights. They brought in a man with 9 Finals appearances, and 8 straight at the time of signing for them.

LeBron James, his 3 championships and all the experience that comes with that was supposed to save them. However, it didn’t work out that way in his first season.

A groin injury and internal disharmony put paid to those ambitions, and dented LeBron’s Finals run. Now, fully fit and with the incredible Anthony Davis to team up with, LeBron looks set to lead LA back to the pinnacle of basketball. 

For LeBron, a Finals win would shut the mouths of those who criticized his move to Los Angeles.

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“For us as a franchise, I’m extremely proud to be a part of this franchise getting back to where it belongs,” James said, “and that’s playing for championships and competing for championships and representing the Western Conference in the championships. This is what I came here for. I heard all the conversations and everything that was said about why did I decide to come to L.A — the reason I came to L.A., it was not about basketball. All those conversations, just naysayers and things of that nature.

“I understood that, with the season I had last year and my injury, it just gave them more sticks and more wood to throw in the fire to continue to say the things that they would say about me. But it never stopped my journey and never stopped my mindset and never stopped my goal.”