The Denver Nuggets finally got their hands on that elusive NBA championship this year and they won it in dominant fashion. The Nuggets went 16-4 in the playoffs, capping off a memorable postseason run with a 4-1 win over the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.
Kyle Kuzma, though, believes that his 2019-20 Los Angeles Lakers were a tier above these Nuggets as well as the 2020-21 Milwaukee Bucks and the 2021-22 Golden State Warriors. He agreed with a fan on Twitter who claimed none of these three championship-winning teams would even take those Lakers to seven games.
The Lakers were clearly a class apart in the Bubble in that 2020 postseason, but they did lose one more game than the Nuggets on their way to winning the title, going 16-5. They dispatched the Portland Trail Blazers, Houston Rockets, and Nuggets in five games each before beating the Heat in six games in the Finals.
You could certainly make the case they were the best defensive team among these four, but it isn’t quite as clear-cut as this fan might think. A healthy duo of LeBron James and Anthony Davis though would have been quite difficult to beat over seven games and it is a shame they haven’t been healthy in the postseason since that run.
As for how the Warriors and Bucks fared in their respective title runs, the former went 16-6 while the latter lost the most games of the lot, going 16-7.
Kyle Kuzma Is Quite Proud Of That Title Run In 2020
Kuzma came off the bench for the Lakers in that run in 2020 and averaged 10.0 PPG, 3.1 RPG, 0.8 APG, 0.3 SPG, and 0.3 BPG. He was traded a year after that to the Washington Wizards and looks back fondly to those great days.
While many feel that title deserves an asterisk because it came in the Bubble, Kuzma believes it was a true test of who really loved the game of basketball. It certainly wasn’t a very comfortable setting for any of the teams involved and the Lakers do deserve credit for being the ones who best dealt with those circumstances to come out on top.