A Recap of the 2020 NBA Finals
By: Spencer Young
Tags: Sports, LeBron James, NBA Playoffs, Los Angeles Lakers, NBA

The Top Performers:

LeBron James:

29.8 points, 11.8 rebounds, 8.5 assists, 1.2 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game

What more can be said?

In year 17, at 35-years old, while spending over 90 days in an isolated bubble, LeBron James achieved yet another amazing feat that only adds to his legacy.

There were times where he showed his age: against Denver in the Conference Finals and in Game 3 of these 2020 NBA Finals, he sometimes played tentative due to exhaustion and a lack of burst. Yet, when it mattered the most, it was him who made the crucial plays that won the Lakers the title.

In Game 2, it was LeBron who busted the zone defense over and over, making the defense that once froze him in 2011 look hapless. In Game 4, after another poor first half, with only 8 points and 5 turnovers, James turned in another classic, scoring 20 points in the second half to reinvigorate his team (including some timely, contested three-pointers over great Miami Heat defenders).

Game 5 was almost to good to be true. 40 points, 13 rebounds, 7 assists, and a Finals career-high 6 three-pointers. James nearly left it all out on the floor in Game 5, and while he came up short, it was truly one of the better games of his career.

While Game 6 turned into more of a formality than anything else, it was James’ defense that set the tone for L.A. with him taking the matchup of guarding Jimmy Butler from the beginning of the game.

All in all, this wasn’t the best individual postseason of LeBron’s career, nor the crowning accomplishment of his Finals victories, but it still, due to all the extenuating circumstances and his extraordinary level of at age 35, was simply an amazing feat by an all-time great.

Jimmy Butler

26.2 points, 8.3 rebounds, 9.8 assists, 2.2 steals, and 0.8 blocks

Jimmy Butler proved a lot in these playoffs. His play was LeBron-esque in these Finals, as he was his teams top playmaker, defender, scorer, and everything in-between.

It wasn’t always clear whether or not Butler could be a championship-level team’s #1 option, yet Butler, for two games in these Finals, produced at a historic level, and he was good for the remaining four games.

He had an almost inhumane task: outproduce the combination of Anthony Davis and LeBron James while taking on the other team’s top perimeter options, AND make plays for the rest of the team.

Butler’s offensive game isn’t always pretty: a combination of hard-nosed drives, baiting defenders into fouls, pull-up mid-range jumpers, and a shaky three point shot. But, it says something about him that, on a night when James had 40 points and made 6 three-pointers, the prevailing team was the Heat, who leaned on Butler to isolate against mismatches and draw fouls against his defenders over and over again.

It is not surprise that by Game 6, Butler was gassed and appeared to have nothing left to give, but he gained a new level of respect and admiration almost unanimously in the sports world.

Anthony Davis

25.0 points, 10.7 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.3 steals, and 2.0 blocks

Through two games of these NBA Finals, it appeared that Anthony Davis would be Finals MVP. Even before Bam Adebayo went out with an injury, Davis’ length and athleticism simply proved to be too much to handle for an undersized Miami Heat team.

That changed in Games 3 and 4, when the Heat doubled Davis in the post and relentlessly fronted him whenever he sought the ball. The result was that Davis only averaged 18.5 points in Games 3–4 after averaging 33 in the first two games.

Game 5 was a strange Game for Davis, whose numbers (28/12/3/3/3) didn’t reflect the fact that he was limping for most of the game. He battled through a heel contusion, a twisted ankle, and likely some bruises due to the contact he was taking in the paint.

Defense, however was a whole other story.

AD controlled the paint in this series, undermining Jimmy Butler’s penchant to make plays off the dribble. In Game 4, after Butler torched L.A. for 40 points, it was Davis who took the challenge of guarding Butler, and he held him to a relatively low total of 22 points. In Game 6, the deciding game of the series, the Lakers moved Davis off of Butler and onto Bam Adebayo, which was an extremely effective move because Davis at center stopped Butler and Bam Adebayo from exploiting L.A. in pick-and-rolls.

Davis didn’t garner a single vote for Finals MVP, interestingly enough, even though he his a key three-pointer in the dying moments of Game 4. But his performance this season made him one of the all-time great second options, comparable to the “1A-1B” pairings that the Lakers have seen over the years.