Mamba mentality - Los Angeles Lakers dedicate 17th NBA title to late Kobe Bryant

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida (AP):

The ultimate anguish. The ultimate joy.

This season, for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, had it all. And it ended in the only fashion that they deemed would be acceptable: with them back atop the basketball world.

For the first time since Kobe Bryant’s fifth and final title a decade ago, the Lakers are NBA champions. James had 28 points, 14 rebounds, and 10 assists, and the Lakers beat the Miami Heat 106-93 late on Sunday night to win the NBA Finals in six games.

“Our organisation wants their respect. ‘Laker Nation’ wants their respect,” James said. “And I want my damn respect, too.”

Anthony Davis had 19 points and 15 rebounds for the Lakers, who dealt with the enormous anguish that followed the death of the iconic Bryant in January and all the challenges that came with leaving home for three months to play at Walt Disney World in a bubble designed to keep inhabitants safe from the coronavirus.

It would be, James predicted, the toughest title to ever win.

“We have a PhD in adversity, I’ll tell you that much,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. “We’ve been through a lot.”

LEBRON’S FOURTH TITLE

They made the clincher look easy. James won his fourth title, doing it with a third different franchise – and against the Heat franchise that showed him how to become a champion.

Bam Adebayo had 25 points and 10 rebounds for Miami, which got 12 points from Jimmy Butler – the player who, in his first Heat season, got the team back to title contention. Rajon Rondo scored 19 points for the Lakers, who put together the elite talents of James and Davis with this moment in mind.

And Davis, as white and gold confetti coated the floor around him, spent his first moments as an NBA champion thinking of Bryant.

“All we wanted to do was do it for him,” Davis said. “And we didn’t let him down. I know he’s looking down on us, proud of us.”

With that, the league’s bubble chapter, put together after a four and a half month suspension of play that started on 11 because of the coronavirus pandemic and came with a promise that it would raise awareness to the problems of racial injustice and police brutality, is over. So, too, is a season that saw the league and China get into political sparring; the death on January 1 of commissioner emeritus David Stern, the man who did so much to make the league what it is; and then the shock on January 26 that came with the news that Bryant, his daughter, Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash.

The Lakers said they were playing the rest of the season in his memory.

They delivered what Bryant did five times for LA – a ring – and the clincher was emphatic.

“You have written your own inspiring chapter in the great Laker history,” Lakers owner Jeanie Buss said. “And to Laker Nation, we have been through a heartbreaking tragedy with the loss of our beloved Kobe Bryant. Let this trophy serve as a reminder of when we come together, believe in each other, incredible things can happen.”