The Los Angeles Lakers begin their NBA Playoffs journey at Disney World.
“We’re going to Disney World!” This is a common phrase amongst athletes describing the first thing they’ll do after winning their hard-earned championship. However, in the strange year of 2020, Disney World is now where championships must be earned.
Disney, The NBA and the Los Angeles Lakers have a surprising amount of connections. One connection is that most great Disney movies have the main character experience a tragic beginning.
Whether it is Bambi’s mother dying after being hunted, Simba’s father Mufasa being killed when Simba was just a young cub or even the opening sequence of 2009’s “Up”, showing Carl’s entire marriage to his wife Ellie from the wedding until her death in old age.
Part of what makes the NBA so inspiring is that most of these players overcame insurmountable odds coming out of neighborhoods where many of their peers don’t even make it to 18.
LeBron James’ speech to the crew of the new Space Jam movie while wrapping up the movie recently leaked as he opened up about coming from a single-parent household, and has previously opened up about bouncing from home to home in his youth while trying to attend school.
This same LeBron James ended up creating a school to provide a better life to at-risk youth in the same neighborhood he grew up in. If that isn’t a Disney story in the making I’m not sure what is.
In fact, Disney recently announced they will be making a movie called, “The Greek Freak”, about Giannis and his brothers’ lives growing up selling trinkets on the street in Greece to get by before making it to the NBA against insurmountable odds in classic Disney fashion.
Lakers fans also know one of the main Lakers connections was that Kobe Bryant was a die-hard Disney fan who frequently visited Disneyland with his family. In fact, Disneyland even held a celebration for the Lakers 2009 championship in which Kobe was paraded around on a float with Mickey Mouse and all of Mickey’s classic Disney friends.
Since the Lakers are currently in Disney World pursuing (and likely winning) their 17th championship let’s see which Disney characters are representative of the players on the current Lakers roster.