Frank Vogel Insists Lakers Would Have Won 2020 Championship Anywhere
frank-vogel-insists-lakers-would-have-won-2020-championship-anywhere
Former Los Angeles Lakers head coach Frank Vogel reaffirmed this week that the franchise’s 2020 NBA championship was inevitable, saying the team would have prevailed regardless of the league’s Florida “bubble.”
Speaking after the Dallas Mavericks’ preseason victory over the Lakers on Wednesday, the Mavericks assistant coach dismissed claims that competing teams lost motivation during the pandemic-shortened season. “We entered the bubble as the number one team in the league, the number one seed,” Vogel said. “We were gonna win that thing, whether it was in the bubble or whether it was in Staples Center. We were winning that thing.”
Before the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020, Los Angeles held a commanding lead in the Western Conference standings; only the Milwaukee Bucks owned a superior overall record. The Lakers had also defeated the Bucks and the Los Angeles Clippers, their primary championship rivals, in consecutive games just days before play was suspended.
Vogel called the title run “the pinnacle of my coaching career,” noting that the Lakers navigated unprecedented obstacles inside the league’s first-ever biosphere to secure the franchise’s 17th championship. He credited both the roster construction around LeBron James and Anthony Davis and the coaching staff that included current Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd, then his lead assistant.
Los Angeles hired former player JJ Redick as head coach last year. Redick is now evaluating his options for the 2024-25 starting lineup as he prepares for his second season on the sideline.
Source: Lakers Nation
