The Los Angeles Lakers were already favorites before the beginning of the 2019/20. Now that the league is set to return after the suspension in March, the Purple and Gold remain as favorites to claim the championship next October. The path won’t be easy for them; they lost Avery Bradley, who decided to sit out for the resumption, as well as Rajon Rondo, who suffered a hand injury.
The journey to the championship will be more complicated now, but everybody who makes the case for the Lakers always points to one factor, they have LeBron James. Bron is widely considered the best player on earth right now and some believe he will be enough to beat everybody and give the title to the Lakers.
Sports analyst Nick Wright believes now the difficulty is bigger for LeBron, and this title should count as two. During Monday’s edition of ‘First Thing First’, Wright explained that if LeBron wins the championship this year, he would tie Michael Jordan with 6 rings each.
“We all know LeBron, officially unofficially got credit for two rings when he came back from 3-1 down and beat the 73-win team. So right now he’s at four; before the stoppage happened, the Lakers were playing their best ball of the season, they were healthy. The stoppage happens, they get thrown off courts, Giannis is able to get healthy, other things happen that makes it harder. Then they lose Bradley, now they lost Rondo. When they win the title this year, counts it another two, which means LeBron and Jordan both have six rings, two for the 73-win Warriors, two for this years giving all the injuries, six rings to six rings, so it’s tied.”
This is without any hesitation one of the boldest claims we’ve seen in NBA media in recent times. Imaginary rings don’t count here. Charles Barkley or Karl Malone don’t have ‘unofficially rings’ despite having won MVPs and making it to the Finals, those rings were won by Michael Jordan.
It would be interesting to see where Wright is coming from with that idea of LeBron getting two rings because he came back from a 3-1 deficit. Besides, the Lakers seemed pretty comfortable even without Avery Bradley on their roster. They haven’t announced what they’re going to do with Rondo’s injury and that doesn’t seem to be a big problem for them, either.
That’s just not how things work. In this league, if you win, you win; you don’t get imaginary rings because the task was harder than others. If LeBron wins this year, he’ll have four years and still will need two to tie Michael Jordan.
