The Los Angeles Lakers found themselves on the wrong end of a championship trophy in 2020. While they had the trophy in their hands, they never got a chance to take the same around the city as hordes of Laker fans cheered for them. LA worked extremely hard for that title win over the Miami Heat in the bubble, but they really got no time to savor it.
The Lakers came off an incredibly short off-season that year and have struggled since due to roster moves that just haven’t worked out. Most of the 2020 championship team has been split up, but the bonds they formed continued. It is a shame that they never got a championship parade and the players know it too.
During the Warriors championship parade, Alex Caruso tweeted about how he felt sick watching their celebrations. Kuzma promptly retweeted that with a quote and reminded Caruso that they never even got a parade after their championship win.
We didn’t even have one wth!!!!! https://t.co/sBWIikquYP
— kuz (@kylekuzma) June 20, 2022
The Lakers deserved a parade, but the world situation was not going to accommodate that into the plans at that time. We all had health with covid for over 6 months by then, but there were still constant outbreak cases across the country, making it very unsafe for the Lakers to celebrate a title with a parade that sees over 50,000 residents join in.
LeBron James has seen his fair share of championship parades, but many of those Lakers players may not even come close to winning a championship again. That was their only shot at attending a parade, and it seems to have slipped away.
Even if the Lakers somehow win one of the next two titles, the team that will enjoy the parade will look vastly different from the team that won the 2020 title, so the players from that squad may just need to painfully move on.
