People still talk about the 2020 NBA Finals and how the Los Angeles Lakers won it all.
It was a very unique championship, one that hopefully will never have to happen again.
Years later, LeBron James fondly remembers the Finals and calls them the “purest form of hoops.”
“I agree when a lot of people say it’s the purest form of hoops. It was just strictly basketball. We all have the ability to do whatever we want in life. We’ve made a bunch of money. We have all the access. That’s gone in the bubble. Everything in the bubble was strictly about basketball,” James said, via Legion Hoops.
LeBron says the 2020 Bubble was the purest form of hoops 👀
(via @mindthegamepod)pic.twitter.com/lJpPSrLKPT
— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) June 10, 2025
We all remember how the NBA world was completely shut down when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe.
After a few months of everything being quiet, the association announced that it would hold the playoffs in the locked-down safety of Orlando’s Walt Disney World Resort.
What followed were weeks of NBA players far from the rest of the world, unable to travel home or even visit most of their friends and families.
Instead, they were holed up with their teammates, focused solely on playing basketball.
In the end, the Lakers were able to beat the Miami Heat, but some people questioned the authenticity of the Finals that year.
They feel the title doesn’t count as much as others because of the conditions the playoffs were held in.
However, James believes this was a special time because the players were in one location with one goal for many weeks.
Was this the purest form of basketball?
People are still debating that, but James obviously has his opinion.
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