A Recap Of The Weirdest Season In NBA History! (An Original Documentary)

the 2020 season was one of the craziest in nba history and certainly the longest the season from opening day to the last game of the finals spanned over 355 days just short of a year for me personally this season was amazing but i'm also happy it's over including 2k talks i made 178 goddamn videos directly pertaining to things this season and with my average video being around 12 minutes that is 35 and a half hours worth of content in just one season so i have talked a lot about this particular season however i also feel would be valuable to do one final reflection of this season this year had so many ups and downs and a lot of unexpected things so i decided i would make the first documentary on this channel in over a year a recap of the weirdest season in nba history before we can talk about what went down in the 2020 season first you have to talk about what went down before opening night the 2019 offseason is one of the wildest in nba history so many star players moved many to unexpected places and the overall landscape of the nba shifted drastically with said moves the big ones are obviously the lakers trading for anthony davis moving a good handful of young players and a plethora of picks in exchange for putting the peace in place to build a true contender in los angeles for the first time since kobe was in charge but the city of los angeles was not done as kawaii leonard after winning a championship in toronto decided he preferred warm weather and headed to the clippers with a caveat coming with him was paul george this being probably the most shocking move of the off-season after two disappointing seasons in oklahoma city george decided enough was enough and demanded a trade to the clippers where the thunder got back shae gilges alexander and a big handful of first rounders the brooklyn net signed both kyrie irving and kevin durant kd bounced out of golden state because he wanted to prove himself a champion outside of an op super team and kyrie bounced out of boston because well there's a lot of reasons that i don't feel like getting into right now for some other weird moves chris paul and russell westbrook were traded for each other russ having been the foundation of oklahoma city for nearly a decade seeing him play for another franchise was weird and more importantly seeing him play with harden despite a poor fit was especially weird the miami heat signed jimmy butler which at the time was a puzzling move but in hindsight was genius for both parties the celtics signed kemba walker after he made up basically the entirety of the hornets franchise for many years the sixers decided to ruin their future by maxing al horford into bias harris there was also the draft where the most hyped prospect since lebron james zion williamson ended up going number one to the new orleans pelicans with a number two pick being john morant who would go on to win rookie of the year and with the warriors dynasty now toppled after they lost the 2019 finals and kevin durant left in free agency for the first time in years the nba was wide open once more the lakers and clippers were the top dogs out west and out east there was the milwaukee bucks with there being many b-tier contenders below those teams at least that was the viewpoint at the time no longer was the champion set before the season even began there were multiple possible outcomes that made the nba exciting for the first time in a while and too many this season was going to be one of the best in nba history as for how that worked out well oh boy the season opened up like pretty much every other nba season we got the first round of the battle of la and it was everything it was hyped up to be both la teams looked damn good out east the bucks looked even more dominant than last year starting off of the season only losing seven games over their first 50 of the year they took care of business in the regular season which would all but guarantee a second mvp for giannis under decupo the miami heat looked surprisingly good when many expected them to be fighting for an eighth seed which was just the start of this team being an underdog sticking with the underdogs the okc thunder shocked many people and ended up being pretty damn good with chris paul having a comeback season the raptors were pretty good despite kawhi being gone many teams like the celtics nuggets jazz pacers magic and sixers were all about as expected the dallas mavericks also surprised many as luka established that no he wasn't a future superstar he's already a superstar the memphis grizzlies with john morant showed that they were ready to compete now not later as they fought for the eighth seed in a tough western conference but on the lower end of things jim boylan on the chicago bulls made me contemplate suicide daily luke walton made king's fans contemplate suicide daily the pelicans fell short due to zion not playing most of the year the spurs fell from grace the wolves sucked steph curry broke his hand so the warriors tanked the sun showed good signs but ultimately fell short the blazers dealt with injury all year the hornets were better than expected which is to say they were bad instead of very bad the knicks were the knicks the wizards had plenty of offense but not a drop of defense the pistons were the pistons the hawks were exactly as bad as expected and the cavs continued to show just how useless that franchise is without lebron james overall the season was going pretty much as expected outside of the heat and thunder being better than expected and the warriors bottoming out but the nba world received a shock that sadly had nothing to do with a player or a team exceeding or falling behind expectations instead this shock came from tragedy it is unfortunately impossible to talk about the 2020 season without talking about the tragic death of kobe bryant this season is one of the craziest ever for many reasons unfortunately many of those reasons come from a dark place the day that kobe bryant died it felt like the earth stood still the day still feels like a blur to me good afternoon from new york we're coming on the air with breaking news very sad news to tell the sports world the la times is reporting that retired los angeles lakers basketball star kobe bryant has been killed in a helicopter crash it happened this morning the chopper reportedly went down just before 10 a.m local time in my case i received a text from a friend giving me the news i went to twitter to see if it was true in much of my disappointment it was then i spent a few hours in disbelief and i made a video expressing my feelings and to be honest i still don't believe it and maybe i never will and of course this hits so many players in the league like a ton of bricks which was tragic but at the same time beautiful seeing just how much kobe meant to so many players and people this guy rather it be direct or indirect touch the lives of so many of those who played in the nba today for a lot of players in the nba especially the younger ones kobe was the player they grew up watching guys like bradley beal devin booker jason tatum and giannis many of these players also trained with kobe and got a peek behind the curtain and they got to see the man behind the legend older players like lebron james was friends with kobe and they dominated the league in a similar time frame former players those who played with him and those who played against him alike expressed their love and appreciation for the legend who died so tragically kobe seemed so much larger than life that the very idea that he was even capable of dying like that would seem hard to comprehend like if kobe was in this situation he would just jump out of the helicopter by a hundred feet and just land on his feet and move on with his day because to many people kobe was that level of larger than life while i felt like i was punched in the stomach by kobe's death i also felt so much euphoria and watching clip after clip of players former and current talking about kobe shaq talking about his relationship with him wade talking about how stealing the ball from kobe was one of the biggest moments in his career that made him feel like he made it all the trash talk stories we had yet to hear all the examples of kobe being a legend on the court and off seeing lakers fans expressing their appreciation outside of the staples center watching players take 8 and 24 second violations to cheering crowds in many ways in life it is the worst moments where humanity can really show its best colors so while i obviously wish kobe did not die i'm partially in a way glad that i was able to experience this massive celebration of the life of my childhood hero but unfortunately while generally humanity showed its best in response to this there was also an ugly side of the reaction to kobe's death that i have to address because it has irked me for a while now time for a rant spoiler alert in case you were somehow not aware even though you're watching this video the los angeles lakers won the 2020 nba championship we'll talk about that more later but i wanted to talk about a particular narrative that i saw coming up in regards to this that really bothered me this championship as well as lebron's mvp campaign was touted as doing it for kobe because kobe played for the lakers and lebron and kobe were friends and let me be clear the lakers and lebron are fully valid in framing this as doing it for kobe that franchise is tied to him and lebron felt that tai made that statement valid and i trust lebron enough to feel that if lebron thought it was appropriate and kobe wouldn't have minded it then that is the case what is not excusable however is the media using this to create a narrative to push someone for an mvp campaign or improve the significance of an nba championship there are many fingers to point here but i'm going to point in one particular direction with this clip what do you see from lebron here in the 17th season because there are people who say that he should be ahead of the mvp race just because of what he's doing where he's doing it and now of course with the burden with everything that happened with that team and kobe bryant oh thank you rachel here is essentially implying that a giannis was not affected by kobe's death just lebron so obviously lebron should win the mvp and b lebron's mvp campaign is all about kobe so because of that we have to give lebron the mvp because kobe died and that's sad and all i have to say to rachel for that one is a soft [ __ ] you it's not a hard one because i don't think this was malicious and intent however things do not have to be malicious in order for them to be shitty this wasn't an attempt at an attack rather just a showcase of pure ignorance giannis and kobe had some sort of relationship the depth of it is only really known to giannis but to dismiss it or at the very least disregard it is so [ __ ] disrespectful to me and kobe's death being used as a narrative device for an mvp award or a championship is horrible and just disgraceful the lakers and lebron can claim that they did it for kobe they're perfectly valid in doing so and perfectly valid and using that as a motivation however what is not valid is the media spinning narratives based on the death of a man but that is the brant over kobe's death was a huge part of the 2020 season for better and for worse the day kobe died was the day the nba world stood still and i will remember that day for as long as i live the next significant thing to follow the 2020 season was all star weekend in order to pay tribute to kobe the nba implemented some interesting changes to the all-star game format all-star weekend had been dying for a while now as it was just getting stale the dunk contest was bad for years then zach levine made it great but only for two years then it went back to being bad no one really cared about the skills challenge and the three-point contest was pretty much the same every year regardless but where it got really bad was the all-star game itself the nba's best of the best would match up in this game and yet it was so often less fun than watching a random regular season wednesday night game of like the magic versus the pacers these players very clearly cared little about the actual outcome and with them not wanting to hurt themselves in a game that does not matter they basically gave no effort whatsoever so the result was basically a no stakes competition of who could hit the deepest three or get the nicest alley-oop finish that changed in 2020. the nba implemented a charity element where the team that won the quarter would get to donate to a charity of their choice which incentivized picking up play in the first quarter team lebron got out to a big lead so in the second quarter team giannis dominated so their charity could get a donation this kept the game relatively close going into the fourth quarter but this wasn't a fourth quarter like normal in a way to pay tribute to kobe the fourth quarter had a set amount of points to get to win the game adding 24 to the highest scoring team to that point as the total they had to reach which with the score being 133 to 124 at that point the target score was 157 so it was a race to see who could get that amount of points first with no set game clock and it was this new twist combined with the charity element as well as the tribute to kobe that i imagine influenced players who give their best for the first time in a long time and certainly for the first time on this large of a scale the players cared about winning this game like a lot like a lot a lot this fourth quarter was some of the most entertaining basketball that i have ever seen the nba's top players all motivated to play their best played some of the most competitive basketball that there is never would you see a stretch of an all-star game where no team would score for a minute let alone multiple consecutive minutes this game was perfect and something the nba needed after that horrific tragedy following the all-star break there were some interesting developments jason tatum really started to take a leap into super stardom averaging 30 points on amazing efficiency over a nine-game stretch lebron james really started to turn it up and got his name in the mvp discussion even though that award was always going to giannis all of this really being capitalized by the lakers winning another battle of la match up and overall things in the league were really starting to heat up at a point where the regular season is usually dead but uh well you know what happened but still the discussion ongoing here ben taylor mark lindsey patrar the crew chief we're we're not really sure here folks we're going to get some information for you as soon as we can find out starting lineups both teams but all 10 starters came out and then the players coaches referees conferred and went back into the locker room and waited for the league to either get the green light or the red light on this game and the official announcement just came that this game has been postponed yeah rudy gobert caught a virus and acted like a total [ __ ] but because rudy had the virus for a few days before being diagnosed and he had played a few teams which then played other teams basically meant that every player in the nba was exposed to some degree or another so the nba just got shut down which was certainly uncharted territory for the league it had no precedent there were so many questions is the season completely canceled will it come back if so when and how during a pandemic where you're supposed to keep your distance from people how are you supposed to play basketball but then we got the answer the bubble the nba would restart the season in a few months in a disney resort in orlando 22 teams would be invited those who were in the playoffs and those who could still make the playoffs there would be some warm-up games then eight regular season games for each teams and then the playoffs would start all of this sounds like common sense now but at the time this idea was wild and the general consensus for those who weren't blinded by a need to see basketball again was like yeah this is not a good idea but as someone who needed basketball again both as a fan and someone who makes his money talking about it i thought it was a bad idea but still i wasn't going to complain about it coming back however the idea of putting hundreds of people in one location for months in hopes that no one would catch the virus just seemed impossible to pull off and yet they did but before we can talk about that it's impossible to talk about the nba coming back without talking about what was going on in the country and the world at the time george floyd's murder sparked yet another wave of the black lives matter movement another wave of rage and another wave of athletes getting involved in social justice except this time it was different people were done with this cycle and they fought hard for change and players in the nba and athletes around the world played a big part in it so as a result the nba could not just come back and ignore these things it was impossible even if the corporation themselves wanted to the players would make damn sure that that didn't happen players wore different messages on their jerseys black lives matter was on the court and the message of that movement was plastered all over the bubble experience after a five month break figuring out every detail of the bubble between collaboration from chris paul and the players association and the league itself it was actually time for it to happen time for these ideas to become a reality and damn did they pulled that off perfectly okay well mostly perfectly the bubble kicked off and it was well weird seeing these players in an empty facility with fake crowd noise was jarring at first but after a while you stopped noticing it and it became normal the regular season came to a close with nothing too eventful well except for the phoenix suns going at you know and damien the lord ever drank 44 points on incredible efficiency over a five-game stretch pushing the team into the playoffs oh and tj warren turning into michael jordan averaging 35 on incredible efficiency himself and with the regular season over our award winners were decided the mvp and defensive player of the year went to giannis as he averaged 30 14 and 5 in just 30 minutes a game while leading the bucks to the best defense in the league and the best record in the league brandon ingram won most improved player after making an all-star team mantras harold won six man of the year john morant was rookie of the year and nick nurse was the coach of the year now it was time for the playoffs something nba fans had been waiting for for over five months the first round was generally as expected the lakers made short work of the blazers after people said they would give them issues the celtics destroyed the sixers the raptors destroyed the nets the heat took care of business versus the pacers like it was nothing the bucks took care of the magic but after that the thunder gave the rockets a real series which was concerning being that many expected the rockets to be at least a borderline contender and the thunder shouldn't have been an issue however the better team did eventually win in game seven luka doncic was just toying with the clippers in round one as he averaged 31 10 and 9 on 60 true shooting including hitting a game winner but the best team won yet again and in one of the most shockingly entertaining playoff series ever the utah jazz went up 3-1 on the denver nuggets as donovan mitchell averaged 40 points a game over that four game stretch including a 57 point performance which is the third highest amount of points scored in a playoff game in nba history behind michael jordan and elgin baylor however mitchell wouldn't be the one this series was most known for as jamal murray just went ballistic in the closing three games of this series jamal averaged 36 points a game on crazy efficiency and just hit clutch contested shot after clutch contested shot like it was nothing the play's already returns cash [Music] and that might be the dagger one of the most unconscious performances i've ever seen so the denver nuggets came back from a three-win lead versus the jazz despite donovan mitchell's best efforts but in the second round when things really started to heat up the lakers and rocket series ended up being a huge disappointment as the lakers defense figured out harden after game one and russell westbrook couldn't throw a pebble in the ocean so that series was closed out in five games but then we got the bucks versus the heat going into this series there was certainly an expectation that the heat would give the milwaukee bucks trouble but no one thought it would go quite how it did the miami heat ended up being one of the biggest stories of this season as the heat built a wall in front of the basket with strong athletic defenders similar to what the raptors did in the previous season which completely shut down giannis and jimmy butler took care of business on the offensive end and really eric spoelstra outcoached the hell out of mike budenholzer so in a shocking turn of events the heat beat the bucks in just five games there was also a close series between these celtics and raptors that went seven games while this was certainly a good series nothing all that crazy actually went down here outside of pascal siakom just playing abysmally but outside of that the celtics won this series and that was pretty much it then we get to the clippers versus the nuggets while the nuggets did just make an impressive 3-1 comeback and jamal murray was clearly on a whole another level the expectation was that the clippers wouldn't have too much of an issue with this team and that seemed like it was the case after the first four games where once again the nuggets found themselves in a 3-1 deficit but also once again the nuggets came back in the last three games of this series the nuggets found themselves being behind by big digits and yet they managed to come back every single time but heading into game seven the general thought was well surely the clippers wouldn't actually lose this game right like they're they've just been messing around i mean not only was this roster stacked but the players on this roster had talked a lot of [ __ ] and made a whole lot of enemies on their way here but no they did lose despite being up by many points in this game kawhi shot 6 for 22 playoff p shot 4 for 16. overall the team shot just 37 from the field and the nuggets actually won so that was surprising and one of the biggest stories of this season but now we have our conference finals matchup set lakers versus nuggets and heat versus celtics we would not be getting the battle of la that seem to be inevitable for over a year now instead we get nuggets lakers which unfortunately would not be as fun as we had hoped as while the nuggets did put up a good fight once more the lakers took care of business with relative ease this team just was not messing around all playoffs at the point where i haven't said a whole lot about this team thus far because what more can i say besides for yeah the lakers are pretty [ __ ] good the eastern conference finals matchup was at least more interesting but it was still relatively one-sided while it did go to six games it was pretty clear that the heat would be the victor which was only further solidified by tyler hero having a 37 point performance in game four so now we get to our finals match-up of the lakers versus the miami heat and at the start it seemed pretty clear that the lakers would run away with this one in game one the lakers just dominated the miami heat and to top all that off both goron dragic and bam of bio got hurt in this game with those guys being two of the three best players on this team so things were not looking good after this game and it only got worse after game two where yeah the heat played a bit better but the lakers were just clearly the superior team anthony davis in game two had 33 and 14 on 75 shooting and lebron had himself a near triple double with 33 9-9 the lakers were just clearly the better team but game three comes around and man a new possession here olynyk to butler butler to the basket a couple of fakes backs away nails it heat up three as we approach the midway point here in the second mid-range jumper from butler goes right at him and banks at home he gets knocked down backs in backs in that fall away shot is up and good butler the drive the runner he banks it in oh what a masterpiece from jimmy butler jimmy butler pretty much single-handedly made this a series 40 points 11 rebounds and 13 assists shooting 70 from the field only sitting for three minutes and nine seconds while on the other end a d struggle on offense and lebron could not put the team completely on his back so the heat win game three for game four the lakers went with a different strategy defending jimmy butler opting to put anthony davis a big man on jimmy and in this game it worked jimmy had a more standard game for him and the lakers would win game 4 giving them a 3-1 lead but jimmy was not done yet in game five jimmy g buckets had 35 11 and 12 on 58 shooting yet another triple-double and this was in spite of anthony davis continuing to play great defense on him but unfortunately for jimmy his efforts would not be enough as in game six the inevitable happened the better team won the game and won the series meaning the los angeles lakers were your 2020 nba champions and that also means that the 2020 nba season actually got an ending i felt it necessary to make this short documentary because i really wanted to highlight the ridiculousness of this season it feels so absurd now that there is actually a champion crown considering how impossible that felt a few months ago adam silver and chris paul and the nba players association the staff of the teams the coaches uh the trainers the people at the actual bubble that are that were working in the hotels anyone involved i have to thank them both as an nba fan and as someone whose job it is to talk about the nba because i was probably [ __ ] but i really want to highlight just how absurd this really was and i want to commend the people that made it possible so those guys deserve a whole lot of admiration for pulling that off but speaking of my job unfortunately this video is probably going to get cleaned because i used nba footage so if you do want to support this content and make this last 25 hour hellscape actually semi worth it because i did stay up all night to make this damn video because i'm an idiot go support me over on patreon you can give me some money for some extra content but if you don't want to do that i would also just really appreciate a like and subscription i get a lot of creative fulfillment out of doing these documentaries so this video getting a lot of success and a lot of likes would really be great for me because i could do these more and if you want to see me do these more then drop a like but with that out of the way thanks for watching this video it is the end of this video please be sure to like and subscribe for more nba content like this and cue the outro music [Music] you

Channel: Rusty Buckets

Views: 139,909

Rating: 4.9528189 out of 5

Keywords: lebron James, nba, NBA, nba 2020 season, 2020 nba playoffs, 2020 nba finals, los ángeles lakers, lakers, lakers vs heat, Miami heat, lakers finals, jimmy butler, James Harden, Adam silver, orlando bubble, basketball, nba shutdown, giannis, giannis antetokounmpo, kawhi leonard, Anthony davis, Damian lillard, lebron James highlights, lebron James mix, lebron James vs heat, lebron James finals, Anthony davis highlights, jimmy butler highlights, jimmy butler mix, nba finals

Id: hOzDSm_9aNM

Length: 25min 53sec (1553 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020