Five years after winning his most recent championship, LeBron James opened up about the unique challenge the 2020 postseason presented amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the latest episode of the Mind the Game podcast (starts at 21:13 mark), James began by describing the entire bubble setup as a type of "mental warfare" because both the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat were basically always around each other during the Finals even when they weren't playing:
"Okay, I've battled this guy. He's pushed me. He's cursed me out. There's a physical game, and then when it's time for me to finally relax and go back and have a glass of wine, I'm bumping into this guy in the elevator. ... I gotta ride up 40 floors to get up to my room. It's another set of mental warfare, and it's like who's gonna be the one who falls. That was a very challenging, difficult thing because you just don't want to be around the competition until I get on the floor. You want to save it for when it counts."
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The setup even on days when Finals games weren't being played was also extremely unique.
James explained the NBA set up different ballrooms in the hotels with practice courts for the teams to use. The Lakers had theirs on one floor of the hotel, while the Heat's was set up on another floor, but it was still possible for opposing players to bump into each other.
"If I came downstairs for dinner and wanted to go to a courtyard where they serve food or whatever, or if I wanted to go to another restaurant they had, I could literally bump into a guy I'm about to compete with a championship for tomorrow night," he said.
One aspect of the bubble that required some adjustment on James' part was the food that was available. It's been well-documented that he spends a lot of money on maintaining his physique, though apparently not as much as some believe.
James explained that "especially in the playoffs" he typically has a specific type of meals that he will eat, but there was a "certain quality of food" that just wasn't available and you "just had to figure it out."
One thing James did note about the bubble is that it forged chemistry between teammates because those were the only people they were really allowed to have visit them in hotel rooms before families were allowed to visit:
"It got to a point where they started allowing us to get out of the rooms. At one point, you were really only supposed to have one or two guests in your room, like your teammates. We kinda broke the rule one time. We would just like squat in everybody's room and play cards. One thing about it, it was definitely a crazy bonding experience because it was just us. Even when you travel on the road during the Finals, or like the playoffs, you don't really go to each other's rooms too much. Everyone has their regiment, whatever the case may be. But in the bubble, you had no choice. It was literally just us. It was you and your teammates, and the coaching staff was there. It was like, 'pull up, bro, come have a glass of wine. We gotta do something. My kids are not here. My wife is not here. I'm about to pull up to your room. 'What you doing?' 'Nothing, same thing I did yesterday. Same thing.' ... If you couldn't sustain your focus and your mental wavered a little bit, then the bubble was definitely not for you."
The mental focus was something James emphasized as being extremely important on this championship run.
"You have all the reasons to get out of focus if you want to because you're so accustomed to a certain lifestyle that you're like, 'the hell with this, I don't wanna do this. Why am I here? I don't wanna be part of this. I can't get a certain meal. I can't do this. I can't see my family.' You can easily get out of why you're there. Once I got there, and I knew the team that we had and I knew what we were capable of, once I locked in, it's survival of the fittest right now and I'm locking in."
After the Lakers won the title, there was a muted celebration following the championship presentation because everyone wanted to get home.
"We won and we went back to the room," James said. "I started packing, which was very different. I went back to my room and started packing my s--t. I can't wait to get the hell outta here. And then they had a little afterparty downstairs at the little outdoor place. We all went there and celebrated with the family and had drinks, but it was fun. You got an opportunity to finally see your family. Everybody was excited and happy. S--t, we won a championship, so I didn't take that for granted, and that was an amazing feat. But I was like, I'm ready to get the hell out of here. It's been 96 days. I cannot wait to get home."
The bubble was unlike anything any of us had ever seen, and that doesn't even factor in some of the things fans weren't privy to. The NBA set up the Walt Disney World complex with everything from gaming rooms to barbershops in an attempt to give team and league staffers as much normalcy as possible.
When play resumed, the result was a rather compelling postseason. The Heat, who were the No. 5 seed in the East, became the first team outside of the top four in either conference to make the Finals since the New York Knicks in 1999.
The Lakers, the top seed in the West at 52-19, cruised through the first three rounds of the playoffs with a 12-3 record. They put away the Heat in six games, with James recording a triple-double in the closeout win (28 points, 14 rebounds, 10 assists).
That victory marks the most recent Finals appearance to date for James. The Lakers have only advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs once since then, losing to the Denver Nuggets in the 2023 Western Conference Finals.
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