LeBron James was a gatekeeper of sorts for the Los Angeles Lakers. When James announced his intentions to leave the franchise this summer, that closed the chapter on an important checkpoint in Lakers history. There are officially no active players left on the roster from the 2020 group that won the NBA championship.
It took about six years. The Lakers had the pieces of a title team assembled, and in just over a half decade, they are all gone. There are few better examples of how quickly the NBA moves on that looking at the team that dominated the NBA Bubble.
One by one, the Lakers disassembled the 2020 championship team
James had a fantastic supporting cast around him when the Lakers won it all in 2020. Anthony Davis, Danny Green, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma, Alex Caruso, Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard, JaVale McGee, and Markieff Morris are some of the most notable names from that group.
They blitzed through that year's NBA Playoffs. Despite the hardships that everyone was going through in trying to manage the pandemic, the Lakers had the added mental toughness that was needed to navigate a difficult environment.
The Lakers packed up every single one of their matchups in the Western Conference in just five games. They steamrolled the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round, exposed a flawed Houston Rockets team in the second, and held off an ascending Denver Nuggets squad in the Western Conference Finals.
By the time they were in the 2020 NBA Finals, everyone knew the Lakers were winning. Even with Jimmy Butler's heroics, the Miami Heat did not truly stand a chance at knocking off Los Angeles. Ultimately, that is exactly how it played out, with LeBron's crew winning in six games.
Despite the dominant run, Rob Pelinka was not content to simply run it back in Los Angeles. The Lakers general manager made considerable changes over the offseason that got rid of several contributors from the 2020 run.
James and Davis remained at the forefront, but injuries ultimately undid the Lakers' chances of going back-to-back.
Then, it happened.
The Lakers gutted their roster and assets, sending even more members of the championship team in Kuzma and KCP out of town to acquire... Russell Westbrook. As a bonus, they also let Caruso walk for nothing in free agency. Yikes.
That is where this whole thing in Los Angeles really came apart. Dave McMenamin even reported recently that the Westbrook trade is where a rift was created between James and the Lakers, leading to his departure from the current team.
McMenamin wrote: "There was more of a disconnect between James and the organization, sources said, one that started during the doomed 2021-22 season following the Russell Westbrook trade and never fully recovered."
The Lakers were spent doing damage control for a while, and they never truly got back to championship contention since that moment. 2023 offered some intrigue, and 2026 had a big what-if, but they never fully knocked on that door.
Davis was gone from the team in the Luka Doncic trade, leaving James as the sole survivor. LeBron is now the last domino to drop.
Unbelievably, Pelinka, the architect of both the Lakers' title team and their unraveling, still stands as a key member from both today's group and the championship squad — just not in a playing capacity. Apart from him, Jeanie Buss, and other figures of that sort, the slate is wiped clean from the team that hoisted the Larry O'Brien Trophy just six years ago.
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