Los Angeles Lakers: This Season Was ‘Best Chance’ At Championship

Perhaps no other team will lament the NBA’s regular season suspension than the Los Angeles Lakers.

In 2019 – 2020, the Los Angeles Lakers were finally set to reclaim that elusive NBA Crown. The arrival of LeBron James last year was supposed to return them to where they historically belong – the postseason.

However, injuries to LeBron and other issues halted their re-ascension in 2019. It was the signing of Anthony Davis for the 2019 – 2020 season that propelled them to Championship contention after a six-season playoff drought.

So it proved, with the Los Angeles Lakers 5.5 games ahead of the second-seeded Clippers in the Western Conference. L.A, the Bucks, Celtics and the Raptors were the only teams to secure a playoff berth before the coronavirus pandemic.

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This season was the Lakers’ ‘best chance’ to win the NBA championship, according to forward Jared Dudley.

“Even next year, there is no better time than us being five games up in this, everybody healthy. That’s one thing we’ve been good at, our health has been phenomenal this year. So you have that, with our defense,” said Dudley.

“Yeah, you could be more talented, but just because you have more talent doesn’t mean you’re better. So, for us, I’m not going to say this is it. Even if we win the championship next year, that’s not saying this would not have been our best chance. This would have been our best chance to win, even if you go into the future.”

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“Especially after us just beating the Clippers and Milwaukee the way we did. The adjustment we made thinking come playoff time, most likely, we’re going to have to get through these teams. And this is how it is. We saw the adjustments we made, winning at home to Milwaukee and having the success we had defensively against them and beating the Clippers at their arena, even though we might have majority fans, the way we did it. LeBron guarding both Kawhi and Giannis. 

“That probably shocked them, like, ‘He’s taking the challenge.’ And us going to the locker room like, we know it’s just one regular season game, but it meant more. It set a tone mentally, because the Clippers beat us twice. They’re thinking, they beat us three times, ‘Oh, they got us.’ I don’t care what anyone says, regular season games, they’re all not the same.”