Every year around this time, NBA teams report to training camp with one collective goal in mind and that’s winning the championship. Not everyone can be like the 2008-09 Los Angeles Lakers and actually accomplish what they set out to do, however.
On September 29, 2008, the Lakers held the Media Day for what would be their 15th championship season as stars like Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum spoke to the local media about their goals of winning it all.
That team was on a mission from the very start after getting embarrassed by the rival Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals the year prior. Losing Game 6 by 39 and watching the Celtics celebrate their 17th championship certainly left a sour taste in the mouths of all the Lakers players and coaches.
It all started with Media Day and training camp, where Bryant famously hung his Olympic gold medal in Gasol’s locker room in order to motivate his co-star. Despite losing to the Celtics, Bryant took on the challenge of leading Team USA back to glory in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, beating Gasol and Spain in the Gold Medal game.
With Gasol now losing twice in final matchups in one summer, Bryant wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again and that started from Day 1.
Head coach Phil Jackson had that Lakers team focused all year as they cruised through the regular season with a 65-17 record to earn the top seed in the Western Conference. Bryant and Gasol were both All-Stars that season with the former finishing second in the MVP voting behind LeBron James. Bryant was named both First Team All-NBA and First Team All-Defense, while Gasol was named to the All-NBA Third Team.
The playoff weren’t much more difficult for the Lakers as they took care of business against the Utah Jazz in five games in the first round before beating the Houston Rockets in six games in the second round. That set up a Western Conference Finals matchup with the Denver Nuggets where Bryant and Carmelo Anthony went mano a mano for six games with the Lakers coming out on top.
With the Celtics dealing with key injuries that cut their title defense short, this was supposed to be the year we got the Kobe-LeBron Finals matchup. That ultimately never happened though as Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic beat James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals to set up a series for it all with the Lakers.
Bryant again was on a mission in the Finals, leading the Lakers to a victory in five games while earning his first career Finals MVP award. Derek Fisher also had some massive buckets throughout the course of that series.
This was the start of back-to-back championships for the Lakers, giving Kobe five total rings in his illustrious 20-year career.
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