The Los Angeles Lakers finished the NBA bubble in 2020 as NBA champions. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 NBA season was finished in a ‘bubble’ setting at Walt Disney World Resorts in Orlando, Florida.
The NBA bubble was an experience unlike any other and will likely never be recreated again. The 2020 Lakers made the most of that experience, winning the NBA Championship and going down in NBA History as the champions of the most unique NBA Playoffs ever.
There were a lot of things that happened in the 2020 off-season that prevented the championship team from staying together, and the Lakers have not reached the NBA Finals since. One team member even thinks that the team could have done it again if they’d stayed together.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope Claims 2020 Lakers Squad Would’ve Won Again
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope played on the Lakers from 2017 until 2021, including on the 2020 championship team and the season afterwards. Caldwell-Pope himself has said that they made a huge mistake not running the 2020 team back: “That team, we had a lot of moments where everything just clicked for us… Those were my brothers, I spent more time with my team than my family… I think if we kept that team together, we would’ve run off two more… There would’ve been no more GOAT talk, that would’ve put (LeBron) at six (titles).”
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope says the GOAT debate would’ve been over by now if the Lakers had kept the 2020 title team together
“That team, we had a lot of moments where everything just clicked for us. Off the court, on the court, inviting to each other’s houses, we were just… pic.twitter.com/erTPXesNjd
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) May 27, 2025
The Lakers dominated in the bubble and throughout the course of the playoffs, not seeing a series go past six games the entirety of the playoff run. To most, they were the best team during that stretch and had an unreal amount of star power behind Anthony Davis and LeBron James, so it was odd that they didn’t keep the team together.
Why Did the Lakers Not Keep the 2020 Team Together?
A core belief as to why the Lakers made changes after the 2020 season was due to the shortened offseason from the COVID-19 pandemic, as teams only had 72 days after the end of the 2020 playoffs to prepare for the new one. Usually, NBA teams are given 125-135 days off between the start of the season, meaning the Lakers had nearly half the time to rest and prepare as they normally would.
The shortened offseason caused Lakers GM Rob Pelinka to pursue fresh legs, letting go of veterans like Danny Green, Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard (although he believes there were other reasons), and JaVale McGee, who all played large roles in the 2020 championship. Dennis Schröder, Marc Gasol, Montrezl Harrell, and Wesley Matthews all joined the team as replacements, none of whom would be on the Lakers roster the following season.
The Lakers dealt with injuries to both James and Davis during the 2020-21 season that severely impacted their seeding and chances of repeating. They would go on to sign Andre Drummond off a buy-out in an attempt to bolster their roster. However, they would still go on to lose in the first round of the NBA Playoffs in six games to the eventual Western Conference Champions, the Phoenix Suns.
The poor playoff performance caused Rob Pelinka once again to hit the reset button as he would go on to trade the rest of the remaining pieces of the 2020 championship team in Kyle Kuzma and Caldwell-Pope (in addition to Harrell) for Russell Westbrook, a trade that makes Lakers fans cringe as Westbrook’s time as a Laker could be considered one of the worst stretches of his career.
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Pelinka also let Alex Caruso walk in free agency to the Chicago Bulls, where he went on to make multiple NBA All-Defense teams. The moves didn’t work as the Lakers finished 11th in the Western Conference that season, and the winning ways from the 2020 season, as well as most of the players, were gone.