Kentavious Caldwell-Pope: 2020 NBA championship was one of the hardest to win

The 2019-20 season was a very unique and trying one for the Los Angeles Lakers, but it was also a very successful one for them. Starting in November, they staked a claim as the best team in the NBA, and by early March, they looked poised to win it all.

But that was when the COVID-19 pandemic started to hit critical mass. The season was paused, then it resumed a few months later inside of the Walt Disney World Resort bubble, where the Lakers claimed the Larry O’Brien Trophy about 12 months after reporting for training camp.

Many continue to attack the credibility of the Lakers’ 2020 championship because of the unique circumstances, including the four-month break while the season was paused and the lack of travel and fans during the playoffs. However, others have pointed out the huge mental and emotional challenges that came with playing in the bubble.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who started every game of that postseason at shooting guard for Los Angeles, talked about those challenges while on “The Draymond Green Show” recently, and he also clapped back at the critics who claim that title should have an asterisk next to it.

“They just hating man. It’s one of the hardest championships to win. You playing a season then the season’s shut down. You don’t know if you’re even going to come back and play basketball. We saw how, in the regular season, we was playing and then we was like, ‘What the [expletive].’ Season’s over with. Like damn. Like what if we can’t come back because we already had in our mind like, ‘This is our championship’ regardless if COVID stopped it or not. But then the season stops, boom, season starts back up and have to go to the bubble…Once we knew the season was starting back up in the bubble, we was hype. We was ready to go get our championship like we wanted.

Then the season stopped again in the bubble. These things like had people’s minds messed up like ‘I’m ready to go home. Forget basketball.’ I’m so grateful and I appreciate all my teammates at the time, their mindset was on that championship. They were ready to go. They came here for a reason and we wanted it.”

From the start of that season, the Lakers seemed motivated, focused and locked in, even as they faced one controversy and challenge after another. One sign of how focused and motivated they were was their defense, which was consistently elite and perhaps the best in all of basketball that season.

In the end, a championship is a championship. No matter the circumstances, winning one is extremely difficult to do.