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Los Angeles Lakers’ Anthony Davis # 3 dribbles Miami Heat’s Bam Adebayo # 13 (Photo by Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
The OKC Thunder join basketball fans as the Lakers and Heat play the first-ever NBA Finals held inside a bubble.
Disney’s bubble has shrunk to two squads, as the NBA Finals contestants consolidated last weekend. The Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat kick off on Wednesday, September 30. For OKC Thunder fans, the season, while wildly entertaining, will always have plenty of ‘what ifs’ associated with it.
Although the Thunder lost in the first round, it came down to the final play. Also, it seemed like the team that went ahead (the Houston Rockets) wore out in their series against the Lakers.
The other and if that tickled our gray matter is how our OKC Thunder would have matched against LA. Although the Lakers’ two superstars, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, are a handful, their team hasn’t established a reliable third-scoring option and they aren’t particularly skilled on offense.
The NBA Finals begin on September 30
The Lakers’ road to the Finals passed through a tired Portland Trail Blazers team that lost Damian Lillard a few games in the series, a Rockets team that the Thunder pushed to seven games (and also suffered losses to key personnel) and a Nuggets team that went through two grueling seven-game series.
The Lakers were never fully tested, although a cooler Nuggets team could have pushed them deeper. That’s why we’ll always wonder how the OKC Thunder would have fared against Los Angeles given the team’s stellar defense and problems defending and stopping guards. The Nuggets were the only team that served a strong point guard (Jamal Murray) and a defense, although it was not on display in every game.
As for the East, the Miami Heat reach the Finals having lost just three games like their counterparts. His path passed through an injury-plagued Pacers sweep, a gentleman’s sweep from the league’s best team, the Milwaukee Bucks, and the conference finals against the Boston Celtics.
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