MAKING KOBE PROUD
Lakers bask in 17th NBA championship after Game 6 romp
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The ultimate anguish. The ultimate joy.
This season, for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, had it all. And it ended in the only fashion that they deemed would be acceptable, with them back atop the basketball world.
For the first time since Kobe Bryant’s fifth and final title a decade ago, the Lakers are NBA champions. James had 28 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists as the Lakers beat the Miami Heat106-93 Sunday night in Game 6 to win the NBA Finals.
“Our organization wants their respect. Laker Nation wants their respect,” James said. “And I want my damn respect, too.”
Anthony Davis had 19 points and 15 rebounds for the Lakers, who dealt with the enormous anguish that followed the death of the iconic Bryant in January and all the challenges that camewith leaving home for three months to play at Walt Disney World in a bubble designed to keep inhabitants safe from the coronavirus.
It would be, James predicted, the toughest title to ever win.
“We have a Ph.D in adversity, I’ll tell you that much,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. “We’ve been through a lot.”
They made the clincher look easy. James won his fourth title, doing it with a third franchise — and against the Heat franchise that showed him how to become a champion.
Bam Adebayo had 25 points and 10 rebounds for Miami, whichgot12 points from Jimmy Butler — the player who, in his first Heat season, got Miami back to title contention. Rajon Rondo scored 19 points for the Lakers, who put together the elite talents of James and Davis with this moment in mind.
And Davis, as white-and-gold confetti coated the floor around him, spent his first moments as an NBA champion thinking of Bryant.
“All we wanted to do was do it for him,” Davis said. “And we didn’t let him down. I know he’s looking down on us, proud of us.”
With that, the league’s bubble chapter, put together after a 4 1⁄ 2- month suspension of play that started March 11 because of the coronavirus pandemic and came with a promise that it would raise awareness to the problems of racial injustice and police brutality, is over. So, too, is a season that saw the league and China get into political sparring, the death on Jan. 1 of
commissioner emeritus David Stern — the man who did so much to make the league what it is — and then the shock on Jan. 26 that came with the news that Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others died in a helicopter crash.
The Lakers said they were playing the rest of the season in his memory.
They delivered what Bryant did five times for L.A. — a ring, and the clincher was emphatic.
“You have written your own inspiring chapter in the great Laker history,” Lakers owner Jeanie Buss said. “And to Laker Nation, we have been through a heartbreaking tragedy with the loss of our beloved Kobe Bryant. Let this trophy serve as a reminder of when we come together, believe in each other, incredible things can happen.”
Game 6 was over by halftime, the Lakers taking a 64-36 lead into the break.
Rondo, now a two-time champion and the first to win NBA rings as a player for the cities of Boston and Los Angeles — the franchises are now tied with 17 titles apiece — was 6 for 6 in the half, the first time he’d
done that since November 2007. The Lakers’ lead was 46-32 with 5:00 left in the half, and they outscored Miami 18-4 from there until intermission.
“We didn’t get the final result that wewanted,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “But even what I mentioned to the guys, these are going to be lifetime memories that we have together. This locker room we’re going to remember this year, this season, this experience and that locker-room brotherhood for the rest of our lives.”
Tip-ins
Lakers: Among the ringwinners: Dion Waiters, who began this season with the Heat; 19-year-old Talen Horton-Tucker (he turns 20 Nov. 25); and Kostas Antetokounmpo — the brother of two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Heat: Goran Dragic (torn left plantar fascia) checked in late in the first quarter, his first appearance since Game 1 of the series. “I just wanted to be out there to help my team as much as possible. The Lakers were better,” an emotional Dragic said.
Join the club
John Salley and Robert Horry were, until Sunday, the only players to win championships with three franchises. James (Miami, Cleveland) and Danny Green (San Antonio, Toronto) added their names to that list.