Everything You Need to Know About The NBA Finals 

 

Starting from October 1st, the NBA finals has been underway. The LA Lakers against the Miami Heats in a 7 game series for the Larry O’Brian trophy. After a 10-year championship drought for the LA franchise, the Lakers won their 17th franchise title during a season clouded by the ongoing pandemic and the loss of former Laker player, Kobe Bryant. With a series won 4-2.

In game 1(Oct. 1), the stacked Lakers team blew out the Miami Heat team with a final score of 116-98. Many people was expecting this as the Heats were huge underdogs throughout this series and many NBA fans lost interest as they thought the champions were obvious. Game 2 (Oct. 3) proved the fans right, with the Lakers taking another game with a 10 point lead making them up 2-0 in the series.  

Miami knew that if they lost game 3, it would be over for them, but the Heats superstar Jimmy Butler brought back Game 3 (Oct. 5) for them with an unbelievable performance of a 40 point triple double and being the third player in NBA finals history to achieve this stat line joining LeBron James and Jerry West with an astonishing 40/13/11 game score.

With the series now 2-1 some NBA fans began to gain more interest in this year’s finals and was excited for game 4. Game 4 (Oct. 7) turned out to be a really close game but the Heat still fell short by 6 points at the last second. Now the series was 3-1 and everyone knew this series was over. Only 1 team in history had ever came back from a 3-1 deficit in the finals (2016 LeBron) and is almost impossible to pull off, since to win this series, the Heat had to win the next 3 games in a row.

With the threat of facing elimination, Miami again pulled off what seemed to be impossible in game 5 (Oct. 10) just barely beating the Lakers with a final box score of 111-108. Again Butler pulled of a monster game, working to the point of exhaustion matching LeBron’s performance with a 35 point triple double making 2 clutch free throws in the game’s final seconds. Now the series was 3-2 still favoring the Lakers but this game gave all the Heat fans and NBA fans a hope that thought that maybe the Heats could actually pull it off.

 Yet reality is cruel and unforgiving as the Lakers outplayed the Heats in game 6 (Oct. 12) winning the series 4-2 with a box score of 106-93, winning the title. But for the LA Lakers this year’s title meant more than a title as from the moment Kobe Bryant and his daughter were killed in a helicopter this January along with seven other people, the Lakers repeatedly spoke of wanting to win the NBA title as a tribute to Bryant.  “We just want our respect,”  LeBron James said during the champions trophy presentation.