The NBA’s Final Four Is Proof the 2020 Bubble Was No Fluke

The 2023 NBA conference finals feature the last four teams we saw in the 2020 bubble. This version won’t mean more, but it’ll feel like it.

The NBA’s 2020 bubble never felt real even to some of us who were in it, and so it is easy to say the achievements there were also not real. But that’s lazy and illogical. The bubble was weird because it was sterile, it was mentally draining and players who were used to feeding off the energy of a crowd had to manufacture that energy themselves. Victory celebrations seemed muted, and losses created a why-did-I-even-come-down-here vibe. But everybody understood the games counted just as much, and a genuine championship was on the line. It wasn’t easier to win than in most years. It was harder.

That is why it’s nice that the last four teams standing in the bubble are the last four standing now. The Heat, Celtics, Nuggets and Lakers should play compelling basketball. Hopefully they can also make any bubble skeptics reconsider their position. And they should be able to give themselves, and their fans, the element that was missing in Orlando that fall: fun.

The bubble, like most everything else in 2020, was a test of mental fortitude. The Heat organization is built on that, which is a big reason they made the Finals that year. The Lakers won largely because LeBron James did a better job of instilling his mindset in his teammates than anybody else in the league. The bubble was such a slog it carried over to the next season: In the 2020–21 playoffs, those four teams combined to win seven games, with just one series win.

Since helping L.A. win a title in 2020, Davis (right) has fallen behind Jokić in the superstar pecking order :: Isaiah J. Downing/USA TODAY Sports

The rosters have had some turnover. Boston and L.A. have different coaches now. But the teams are led by the same stars: Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown; Jimmy Butler; Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray; LeBron and Anthony Davis.

In some ways, the four teams today are a lot like the teams we saw in the bubble. The Celtics can look like the best team in the league for just long enough to frustrate people when they don’t. The seemingly undermanned Heat live by one of Erik Spoelstra’s mantras, “We have enough,” and with the player who embodies it: Jimmy Butler, who was never supposed to be a superstar but willed himself into one. The Lakers are constructed very differently than in 2020, but then, as now, LeBron forced them into contention, and Davis can pull them over the top.

Then there are the Nuggets—the team I still associate most with the bubble, because that is where they found themselves. When they entered it, they were considered another second-tier playoff team—good enough to make the postseason consistently, but unlikely to win a championship someday, partly because they didn’t have a true superstar.

Then Denver came back from a 3–1 deficit to stun the star-led Clippers. Murray, who was just 23, played like the lead guard on a championship team. The feisty Nuggets made the Lakers work in the conference finals—Davis won Game 2 with one of the most memorable shots of the season—and though they lost in five games, they seemed to raise their own ceiling.

The difference in that Lakers series seemed to be that Davis was a transcendent talent, while Nuggets star Jokić was merely a crafty All-Star. Davis averaged 31.2 points on 54.3% shooting. Jokić averaged 21.8 points on 53.2% shooting. Since then, of course, Jokić has been as dominant as anybody in the world. Davis has been dominant in spurts, but he doesn’t play enough. Jokić is not just a more valuable player than Davis now; he is almost certain to finish with a better career.

It’s unfortunate that the highlight of Davis’s career happened in an emotional vacuum; until this season, he had won only one playoff series in front of fans. When he and Jokić meet in this series, the arena will be full of anticipation. The games won’t be bigger than in 2020, but they will feel that way.