The Oklahoma City Thunder won the 2025 NBA championship on Sunday by defeating the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. That means that once again, Los Angeles Lakers fans had to watch another team celebrate getting to the top of the basketball mountaintop.
The memories of the Lakers’ 2020 title are starting to fade, and fans are growing restless for another ring, especially after some of the bad moves general manager Rob Pelinka has made in recent years.
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One of those bad moves was letting super sub guard Alex Caruso leave in free agency in 2021. Caruso now has his second world championship ring, and following Sunday’s win, he appeared to throw shade at the 2020 title that was won inside the Walt Disney World Resort bubble.
But he took to X (formerly known as Twitter) afterward to make it clear he was just cracking a sarcastic joke.
Many have refused to fully count that 2020 championship since it came under unique circumstances during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were no fans during the playoffs, as well as no travel, which made plenty claim it wasn’t a legitimate postseason.
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But at the same time, some players have opined that it was a tougher postseason because of the stringent restrictions imposed within the bubble. LeBron James recently said on his “Mind the Game” podcast that the conditions resulted in “the purest form of hoops” for those three months or so.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Alex Caruso clarifies apparent diss of Lakers’ 2020 NBA championship
