Draymond Green and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope debate whether the Lakers' 2020 bubble championship deserves an asterisk. Caldwell-Pope spent three months isolated, missing his newborn child, but both reject the asterisk claim, arguing winning is hard anywhere. Draymond jokingly suggests the Lakers cheated COVID protocols; Caldwell-Pope counters that everyone was tested and rules were followed.
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Welcome to the brand new Draymond Green Show YouTube channel. Hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any of our content. And speaking of your time with the Lakers, y'all didn't go on to win a championship in the bubble. There's a lot of perspectives on the bubble, quite frankly.
Yeah.
By most people who weren't there.
That's right.
Right. But there's a lot of perspectives on the bubble. What was your perspective on it? Someone who was there, won a championship there. So essentially was there the longest time. What was your perspective on the bubble and being in it?
It was hard. I'll say this, for me, I'm gonna restate it. It wasn't hard.
You know what I'm saying?
I enjoyed, you know what I'm saying, the time, you know, of just reflecting on myself, you know, I was there by myself. No, you couldn't really see nobody, couldn't really have the family there. But that's the biggest sacrifice I had was just not having my family there, you know, trying to manage to deal with that. You know, the kids, I just had my third child at the time and he was just a baby, you know. So that was the biggest sacrifice, you know, for me just leaving the family for that amount of time. Mm-hmm. 3 months at that time, man, was a lot. And I felt like it was, for me, it was great. You know, the stuff we did in the bubble or like being locked in that room, I did that at home.
Right.
So like if I'm in my game room, you know, I'm down there 6 hours straight playing the game. So it's like, it really didn't faze me as much, you know what I'm saying? As far as like me missing the family and the kids, you know, stuff like that. Other than that, man, I had a great time.
That's funny. And for those that say the bubble championship has an asterisk next to it, I'll say it before you go. I am not of that group.
Yeah, man.
Because it is hard as hell to win a championship. I don't care where the fuck you win it at. But for those that say there's an asterisk next to the championship that y'all won in the bubble, what do you say to them?
They just hating, man. It's like, they, that's like, like you said, it's one of the hardest teams to like, the championship to win. I would say, you know, you playing a season, then season shut down. Like, don't know if we gonna even come back to play basketball or, or like we so high off like the regular season, how we was playing. And then we was like, what the fuck? Season's over with. Like, damn. All right, what if like, if they do, what if we don't, can't come back? 'Cause we already had in our mind like, man, this is our championship regardless of if COVID stopped it or not, you know? So, but then the season stops, you know, boom. Season start back up, but we gotta go to the bubble. So like before they even, you know, like before it even happened, like going to the bubble, like as a team, you know, we still like, you know what I'm saying, was able to like, you know, hoop, I would say, you know what I'm saying? We didn't really like, we did it within the rims of like the testing of the NBA, you know, stuff like that. But like, we were still able to like be around each other, be able to hoop, you know what I'm saying? And have fun, like regardless of like if this, the season stopped. So once we knew the season was like starting back up in the bubble, we was hyped. We was ready to go get our championship. Like that we was at, like that we wanted, you know what I'm saying? Then, you know, season stopped again in the bubble.
Yeah.
You know, guys, a lot of people don't like these things. Like have people's mind messed up. Like, man, all right, now it's time. I'm ready to go home. You know what I'm saying? Like, forget basketball. So like, I'm so grateful and I'm like, I appreciate all like my teammates at the time. Like, man, they mindset was like on that championship. They weren't ready to go. They came here for a reason. And we wanted it. So.
You said it was harder. It was one of the hardest championships to win as someone who's won multiple championships. What made it so much harder to win there as opposed to if you're going to Miami for an away game, you know, or you're going to another place?
I would just say the mindset we had and how everything had, like everything had happened. I was saying like COVID shutting down, you know what I'm saying? Like we wanted that one so bad, you know what I'm saying? We would've jumped through flaming hoops for it, you know? So like, I gotta say, this was like, for me it was the hardest one because of like all the shutdown, like restart and shutdown, you know? Like that can change a lot of people's mindset, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And like, like you said, man, fuck this. Like, I'm not dealing with this anymore, you know? So I was appreciative of that, thankful to everybody on the team at the time, Same mindset, they weren't ready to go. So.
There was word that came outta those meetings. And again, for those of y'all watching, I was not there because we absolutely sucked that year. I think we won 15 games. And so we didn't actually make the bubble.
Yeah, I had a lot going on that year, man. A lot going on.
To be quite honest, I was in LA having a great time. So I'm actually a little happy we didn't make the bubble. Also, Before we move forward, Adam Silver, the mayor of Los Angeles, who wasn't the mayor at the time, so talk to the previous mayor. This man just admitted that they ignore all y'all COVID guidelines, all y'all testing. They kept playing basketball. They cheated on their way to a championship. Cheated. I feel like this is Deflategate. Ooh. Esque or something of that nature. Because these guys, when none of us could play basketball, they just kept playing basketball and getting better. And then they go on and win a championship. So that's why I'm putting the asterisk next to it. 'Cause they was cheating. Nah, I'm just playing. We did it through the rules, man.
Everybody got, every player got tested. You know what I'm saying? If you had COVID, you gotta go home. You can't be around us, man. We did it.
I bet Bron probably had Michelle sitting there testing everybody.
Nah, we just, we didn't wanna stop playing, like, man. Like, and it was like, if it's just the Lakers team at the time, like no outsiders, no way, nobody, like everybody's within the perimeter, like the COVID testing that NBA wanted. Like, I felt like we was good, you know? Like they couldn't say nothing.
Well, guess what? They definitely can't say nothing now. So it's a great time to talk about it.
3 years later, man, 3 years later, we good. Great time to talk about it.
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