Why Former 2001 Laker Thinks He Played On Best Team Ever

He's got a point.

In 2001, your Los Angeles Lakers went on a berserk 15-1 run through the postseason en route to capturing their second of three straight NBA championships, led by the team's tandem of immortals in center Shaquille O'Neal and shooting guard Kobe Bryant.

In a five-game NBA Finals series, Los Angeles defeated an upstart Philadelphia 76ers team, propelled by its own Hall of Fame duo in Allen Iverson and Dikembe Mutombo,

Reserve Lakers point guard Ty Lue, now the head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, recently chatted with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on their Showtime podcast All The Smoke about just where he thinks that LA club ranks on the all-time pantheon of playoff performers.

"The greatest of all time for sure," Lue said. "Nobody could beat that team... Derek Fisher, Ron Harper, Brian Shaw, Rick Fox, Horace Grant, Shaq, Kob, Robert Horry. So I mean, I'm just basing [that GOAT designation] on Shaq and Kob... See, the problem is, what [pundits now] don't understand is Shaq... Forget everything else, how [are] you going to guard Shaq? ...That was the greatest team of all time, to me for sure."

Keep in mind, this is coming from the head coach of a 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers team that boasted three future Hall of Famers, including two All-Stars in their absolute primes in LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, plus a third, Kevin Love, still near his. This was a 57-25 Cleveland club that went 12-2 in the Eastern Conference before its rally from a 3-1 deficit against the team with the greatest regular season record (73-9) in history.

Lue's Cavaliers also played against another team widely considered to be one of the best ever, the 2017 (and 2018) Golden State Warriors featuring four future Hall of Famers in their absolute primes in Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green (Barnes was a deep-bench player at that point in his career, but he did play some rotation minutes for the Warriors en route to his only NBA championship). The 2017 Cavs, who honestly may have been just as good as the 2016 vintage, took one game off that Dubs club, which had gone 16-1 in the playoffs itself. The 2018 Cavs, sans Irving, weren't so lucky, despite a monumental 51-point Game 1 masterpiece from James.

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