Los Angeles Lakers: The five best playoff moments since 2000
By Jason Reed
2. Los Angeles Lakers best playoff moments since 2000: 2. Overcoming a 3-2 deficit to defeat the Boston Celtics, 2010 NBA Finals
This is not a singular moment in the sense of a game-winning shot, like the other moments on this list, but the importance of the Los Angeles Lakers winning the 2010 NBA Championship to the city of Los Angeles as well as Kobe Bryant’s legacy is massive.
It might not seem like a championship in 2010 was all that important after the team won in 2009, but it was. First of all, the Lakers were playing the rivaled Boston Celtics, the team who defeated them in the NBA Finals just two years prior and Kobe and the Lakers wanted revenge.
Plus, this was for Kobe’s fifth championship. While he never caught Jordan, this would give him the upper hand of having more championships than Shaq.
It seems completely trivial and non-important now. At the time, it was important for his legacy to win more without Shaq than Shaq did without him.
The Lakers went down three games to two in the series and it felt like we were going to see a repeat of the 2008 NBA Finals. The Lakers then demolished the Celtics in Game 6, 89-67, setting up one of the most anticipated Game 7s in any sport in recent history.
The Lakers were down six at the half and kept battling in the most stomach-twisting game of basketball that any young Laker, or Celtic fan, has ever seen. In the end, it was Kobe Byrant and the Lakers that emerged victorious, giving the team the last laugh against its biggest rival and Bryant yet another feather in his cap.
We did not know it then, and we did not want it to be true then, but this would be the last championship that Bryant won in his career and boy, was it fitting.