Wednesday, October 14th, 2020

  The Opening Tip

• A moratorium on pretending the Lakers’ Minneapolis titles count

• The Clippers are in a bad place right now 

• The number of players with a title on three different teams just doubled

• The NBA Finals ratings are still down, but grew as the series went on

1. The Lead: Let’s be honest, it’s a sham to count the Lakers’ first five titles  

The Lakers won either their 17th title or their 12th title on Sunday night, depending on how much stock you put in midwestern dinosaurs bricking set shots during the turn of the century. 

• The 12 no-doubt titles the Lakers possess are Kobe’s five, LeBron’s one, Magic Johnson’s five, and the one Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain got in 1972. 

The five suspect ones are from the “NBA”’s first “dynasty,” all won by the Minneapolis Lakers in the late 1940s and ‘50s, when the league was mostly a blip on the pro sports radar plodding through the midwest.Take 1948 -- the Lakers’ “first title year,” which fans today count as one of their 17 along with the ones won by LeBron James, Shaq, Kobe Bryant, and so on: 

• The league wasn’t even called the NBA. It was the “BAA.” 

• There was no shot clock. 

• There were 60 regular season games. 

• The team -- pictured above -- was whiter than Silicon Valley in the early 2010s. 

• It featured two players over 6-foot-6. 

• As a whole, the team shot 36.1 percent from the field -- second in the 12-team league -- and averaged 84 points a game -- first in the league. In other words, they lit up the scoreboard by making a little more than one in three shots.  

• To claim the title, they beat the all-white Chicago Stags, the all-white Rochester Royals, and the all-white Washington Capitols.

SHOULD THAT COUNT, LAKERS FANS?Sorry.But you can pick apart the ‘50 title, the ‘52 title, the ‘53 title and the ‘54 title in basically the same way. Geez, that two-game Western Finals sweep of the Anderson Packers in ‘50 was really something!For the record: You can do the same on a much smaller scale for the Celtics of the late ‘50s and ‘60s, though those teams had two revolutionary players in Bill Russell and Bob Cousy.Oh, and: The Minneapolis Lakers’ best player was 6-foot-10 George Mikan, who towered over the other Dicks and Dons of the time. His best move was to stomp up the court, methodically carve out position in the low post -- there was no 3-second violation -- and softly lay the ball in over his 6-foot-7 defender. (Here’s a cool picture of him and Shaq.)The best anecdote of him -- which encapsulates the era he played in -- comes from Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball: During the ‘51 Western Finals against Rochester, Mikan played with a fractured leg -- and a plate “taped” to his leg -- and averaged 23.8 points for the series. (The Lakers ended up losing, 3-1.) 

Wrote Simmons of that fact: “Of course, he just inadvertently proved the point of the previous few paragraphs -- that Mikan excelled during an era when centers could score 20 a game in the playoffs while hopping around with a plate taped to their broken leg.”

You can hate Simmons. But you can’t hate that line.

2. LeBron bully-balled his way through the Heat defense    

If the GIF above doesn’t seem like much of a highlight, that’s because Game 6 was pretty much highlight-less. The Lakers led the Heat by eight after the first, 28 at half and won, 106-93.LeBron, age 35, averaged 29.8-11.8-8.5 for the series and shot 53-of-79 (67 percent) on 2-point shots.

3. Imagine being the Clippers right now?    

They won the offseason by acquiring Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, declared themselves the future kings of LA -- not that they haven’t done that before -- entered the playoffs as the title favorites, turned in the biggest collapse in NBA history, fired their coach, then had to watch their eternal big brothers win a (12th) NBA title.Now they have to deal with all the Twitter jokes until whenever the hell the season starts back up, and if they don’t win next year, both George and Leonard can opt out and leave for nothing, despite the fact that the Clippers traded seven first round picks for the two of them.The grubby fingerprints of Donald Sterling cannot be washed from this cursed team.

 4. Trivia time 

LeBron James and Danny Green on Sunday became the third and fourth players to win a championship with three different teams.(LeBron also became the first to win Finals MVP with three different teams.)Who are the other two?Hint: Lakers.

 5. 2019 Finals ratings vs. 2020 Finals ratings 

Data via Sports Media Watch

 6.  Quick hits 

• Stan Van Gundymight be the next Pelicans coach. 

• The Raptors, no longer the reigning champions, held that title for 486 days. 

• Jimmy Butler’s Finals stats: 26.2 points, 8.3 rebounds, 9.8 assists. 

• A reminder that Chuck chose the Trail Blazers to sweep the Lakers in the first round.

 7.  Off the press 

• Rajon Rondo has made history with the Celtics and Lakers, but is he a Hall of Famer? [Yahoo Sports]

• This may be the start of LeBron’s golden years [The Ringer]

• Zach Lowe: Why the GOAT debate is different now [ESPN]