The Los Angeles Lakers’ 2020 NBA Championship team had a number of outstanding role players that were crucial to that team’s success. Rajon Rondo, Alex Caruso, Dwight Howard and Kyle Kuzma were all massively important, as was Kentavious Caldwell-Pope who has proven himself to be one of the best 3-and-D guards in the league and someone who can deliver on the biggest of stages.
Caldwell-Pope was always tasked with defending the opposing team’s best guard while also being great in transition for the Lakers as well as a knockdown 3-point shooter. He and the rest of the Lakers are proud of that 2020 Championship, but because it came in the bubble, there have been many who’ve disputed it as needing an asterisk next to it.
But Caldwell-Pope had a response to those criticizing the championship in an appearance on the “Above the Rim with DH12” podcast. The former Lakers guard reminded everyone that the Lakers were dominant during the season before things got shut down, adding that the players complaining about it knew they wouldn’t have beaten those Lakers:
“Yeah, like we talked about it earlier. The season didn’t stop, whether you wanted to go home or not. That was y’all choice to choose to go home. We was joking about it like, ‘y’all could just give it to us.’ But we didn’t want it like that because of how our season went. We was whoopin’ ass during the season… We weren’t complaining about nothing, we wanted to play. It was the guys that already knew, we was gonna spank them.”
At the time the season got shut down due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the Lakers were 49-14 and had just defeated the two other championship favorites, the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Clippers, in back-to-back game. They were the betting favorites to win the championship so the idea that things only clicked into place once they got to the bubble is revisionist history.
In fairness, some non-Lakers players have spoken about the bubble and how the Lakers’ championship shouldn’t be questioned at all. But in the eyes of Caldwell-Pope, and likely everyone else on that team, everyone had the same chance to win that championship inside the bubble and only the Lakers stepped up and took it.
Lakers’ LeBron James discusses importance of role players to playoff success
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was extremely important to the Lakers’ 2020 NBA Championship and role players stepping up in the postseason is absolutely critical to the success of teams as LeBron James knows very well.
LeBron spoke on this on a recent episode of “Mind the Game” as he praised players on the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder for starring in their roles doing their job at the highest level as he knows role players are needed for any sort of team success.
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