{"id":331397,"date":"2020-10-13T06:06:12","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T20:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=331397"},"modified":"2020-10-13T06:06:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T20:06:12","slug":"bubble-kings-lakers-finish-off-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/bubble-kings-lakers-finish-off-heat\/","title":{"rendered":"Bubble Kings: Lakers finish off Heat"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Los Angeles Lakers players and coaches celebrate after they defeated the Miami Heat 103-88 in Game 6 of the NBA Finals Sunday, Oct. 11, 2020, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. (AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

FLORIDA<\/strong>( AP)\u2014The ultimate anguish. The ultimate joy.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For the first time since Kobe Bryant\u2019s fifth and final title a decade ago, the Lakers are NBA champions. James had 28 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists, and the Lakers beat the Miami Heat 106-93 on Sunday night to win the NBA Finals in six games.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur organization wants their respect. Laker Nation wants their respect,\u201d James said. \u201cAnd I want my damn respect, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 came with leaving home for three months to play at Walt Disney World in a bubble designed to keep inhabitants safe from the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

It would be, James predicted, the toughest title to ever win.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a Ph.D in adversity, I\u2019ll tell you that much,\u201d Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been through a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

They made the clincher look easy. James won his fourth title, doing it with a third different franchise\u2014and against the Heat franchise that showed him to to become a champion.<\/p>\n

Bam Adebayo had 25 points and 10 rebounds for Miami, which got 12 points from Jimmy Butler \u2014the player who, in his first Heat season, got the team 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.<\/p>\n

And Davis, as white and gold confetti coated the floor around him, spent his first moments as an NBA champion thinking of Bryant.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we wanted to do was do it for him,\u201d Davis said. \u201cAnd we didn\u2019t let him down. … I know he\u2019s looking down on us, proud of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that, the league\u2019s 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\u2014the man who did so much to make the league what it is\u2014 and then the shock on Jan. 26 that came with the news that Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven other died in a helicopter crash.<\/p>\n

The Lakers said they were playing the rest of the season in his memory.<\/p>\n

They delivered what Bryant did five times for L.A.\u2014 a ring, and the clincher was emphatic.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have written your own inspiring chapter in the great Laker history,\u201d Lakers owner Jeanie Buss said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game 6 was over by halftime, the Lakers taking a 64-36 lead into the break. The Heat never led and couldn\u2019t shoot from anywhere: 35% from 2-point range in the half, 33% from 3-point range and even an uncharacteristic 42% from the line, not like any of it really mattered. The Lakers were getting everything they wanted and then some, outscoring Miami 36-16 in the second quarter and doing all that with James making just one shot in the period.<\/p>\n

Rondo, now a two-time champion and the first to win NBA rings as a player in the cities of Boston and Los Angeles\u2014the franchises now tied with 17 titles apiece \u2014 was 6 for 6 in the half, the first time he\u2019d done that since November 2007. The Lakers\u2019 lead was 46-32 with 5:00 left in the half, and they outscored Miami 18-4 from there until intermission.<\/p>\n

Ball game. The 28-point halftime lead was the second-biggest in NBA Finals history, topped only by the Celtics leading the Lakers 79-49 on May 27, 1985.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t get the final result that we wanted,\u201d Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. \u201cBut even what I mentioned to the guys, these are going to be lifetime memories that we have together. This locker room … we\u2019re going to remember this year, this season, this experience and that locker room brotherhood for the rest of our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tim Reynolds<\/strong>
\nAP Sport Writer<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FLORIDA( AP)\u2014The ultimate anguish. The ultimate joy. This season, for LeBron James and the Los…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":331404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}