The Los Angeles Lakers won the 2020 NBA Championship through a dominant performance in Orlando, Florida in the “NBA Bubble”. While the Lakers pre-playoffs road in the bubble was not necessarily as easy as some thought it would be, the team led by all-time great, Lebron James, seemed to have confidence that they were in fact the best team in the NBA in the 2020 season. Prior to the 2019 season, everybody that talked NBA believed that essentially the only way to win a ring in the NBA was through having a “Big Three”. Prior to the 2019 season where the Raptors took home the Larry O’Brien Trophy, every single team that has won the NBA Championship, after the Mavericks did so in 2011, had a “Big Three”, or a cast of all star players of more than three, like in the case of the San Antonio Spurs. The 2020 Lakers proved that you don’t necessarily need a “big three” to win a ring in the NBA. The Lakers had two superstars that were both in the top 10 in PER an VORP last season, which may be a key to being a great team in the NBA.

The 2020 Lakers were led by Lebron James and Anthony Davis, two mega superstars in the NBA. These two players also were in the top 10 in the NBA in a few key statistics that show the players’ true value to their teams. Player efficiency rating (PER) is an advanced statistic that tells statisticians what a player’s value is based on production where the average player in the NBA is 15. The second key advanced statistic that shows a player’s value is value over replacement player (VORP) with the average replacement player being -2.0. In the 2020 regular season, the only team to have two players with a PER and VORP in the top 10 in both statistics is the Los Angeles Lakers. While the Portland Trail Blazers had two players in the top 10 in PER, they only had Damien Lillard rank in the top 10 in both categories. Throughout the 2020 regular season, Lebron James had a PER of 25.5, good for ninth best in the NBA, and a VORP of 6.1, good for third best in the NBA, trailing only James Harden and the “Greek Freak”. Anthony Davis, on the other hand, had a PER of 27.4, fourth best in the NBA behind Giannis, Harden, and Luka Dončić, and a VORP of 5.4, seventh best in the NBA. The Lakers were one of the most dominant teams in the NBA last season, with the Milwaukee Bucks having the best record, but it seemed as though despite the record throughout the season, the Lakers had the most dominant team throughout the season.

While the philosophy of having a “big three” can’t be overlooked, it’s not necessarily essential to a team’s postseason success to have three superstar caliber players on the team to win a ring. It certainly helps to have three superstar players on your roster, but championships are frequently won with different types of rosters. For instance, the Dallas Mavericks in 2011 beat the Miami Heat in Lebron’s first season with Miami, the first so called “big three”. The Mavericks, for instance, were led by one superstar in Dirk Nowitzki and a handful of other great supporting players to help them win the title.

The Los Angeles Lakers in the 2020 season were a different type of team than the winners of previous seasons. With the Golden State Warriors dominating the Western Conference for so long, it was thought that the only way to beat them was to match them in the way that they created their roster, which is to accumulate superstars at a cheap price in order to make a push in the playoffs. The Lakers core was Lebron James, Anthony Davis, with a few very solid players in Danny Green, Javale McGee, and Rajon Rondo, and a strong supporting cast led by Dwight Howard and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. While every season is a little different in the winning formula to win, it seems only logical that the team with the most players in the top 10-15 range in PER and VORP will give their team the best shot to winning the NBA title. The Lakers led the way in the 2020 season in those regards, and barring any huge free agent acquisitions to one of the top teams, it seems as though the Lakers are tee’d up to make another run at the 2021 NBA title. The Lakers were the most dominant team in the NBA last season and proved that they were indeed the best team in the NBA by winning the title in seemingly easy fashion. If Anthony Davis and Lebron James are able to stay in the top 10 in PER and VORP next season, I don’t see the Lakers having much trouble winning the title again next season.