Lakers Championship Parade to Press Conference

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[[[The fans line up by the thousands to celebrate with the World Champion L.A. Lakers]]]

Some tired

[[[Some in jubilation]]]

[[[Some just weird... A lot just weird]]]

[[[The parade finally arrives with the head float having the Lakers two Leaders: Johnson & Johnson. The Side of the float Reads- Year of the Johnson and both are wearing Big Johnson T-Shirts.]]]

[[[ The fans celebrate, but Lakers' players are just beginning to celebrate. Before all that can happen, the front office and a few players have to come to their final press conference. The one they are typically watching on TV. The one that has made their stomaches ache with hunger to be on. The one, only a champion can attend.]]] 

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[[[The media is gathered up to attend to hear what the franchise's GM, Balls O'Hard has to say. He's in the back, sipping on celebratory champagne with Larry and Kevin Johnson. The smiles on their faces are as wide as can be and they each give each other a nod to say they're ready. Without further hesitation all three some out and wave for a couple of pictures ]]]

Balls O'Hard: Well, well well. What can I say? This, is a dream come true for the organization as a whole. We gave the fans and the owner what they asked for in our dream season. You know, coming into this season. No one, not even ourselves admittedly, saw this coming. We made a really tough decision that almost came back to haunt us, in trading Mitch Richmond to the Boston Celtics, who gave us everything we could handle and more. We asked Larry Johnson, the ROY and budding star to put ego aside and come off the bench, and we signed a few young guys to help fill out some positions for us. Looking forward into the season, I thought we had a chance to make a run for the title if a few things swung in our direction, and for awhile it looked like we could do it. But the Warriors and the Kings proved to be too much during the season to accomplish that goal. 

Balls O'Hard: Then came the playoffs and we had a gauntlet of opponents to go through. the San Antonio Spurs who could have been the 2 seed in our estimation if Drazen doesn't go out for an extended amount of time. The Warriors, who we believed were the best overall team in the league as they buzz sawed through the second half of the playoffs and the first round. The Grizzlies who have had our number and knocked us out of the playoffs last year. Last but not least we have the Celtics who's meteoric rise was very reminiscent of ours last seas, except they were successful in the playoffs.   

Balls O'Hard: What we've come to realize, is winning a championship has to do with luck more than anyone running a team would like to admit. We benefitted from the Warriors losing a top 3 player in the league for 3 and 1/2 games in our series and the Celtics losing Gilliam for our last 2. Those were clear difference makes for those teams, and we stayed relatively unscathed which in itself was a miracle. A lot of that we'd like to self back pat and say we never put our guys in the position to play too many minutes when some injuries occur; but we all know at the end of the day lady luck decides that. We are beyond enamored at this championship and are very happy to be here. I'm sure most people here are tired of hear us talk about our season and luck; so i'll open the floor to some questions that you may actually want to know the real answer to. KJ and LJ are both here to answer questions as well.

[bowtothebill23]

Jack Markson from The Golden Take. First of all, congratulations on the championship. We know how much it must mean to you and the city of LA. We are glad that, since we in Golden State were unable to pull through, a fellow Pacific team was able to take home the ship.

Throughout the season, you went on the record as believing your team was a pretender due to its inconsistency and random losses to subpar teams. Even in the first round, it seemed as if you were expecting to lose game 7. At what point in the season/playoffs did you really feel as if "we got a real shot at winning this"?

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Mar 4, 2014 18:40:19 GMT -6 bowtothebill23 said:

Jack Markson from The Golden Take. First of all, congratulations on the championship. We know how much it must mean to you and the city of LA. We are glad that, since we in Golden State were unable to pull through, a fellow Pacific team was able to take home the ship.

Throughout the season, you went on the record as believing your team was a pretender due to its inconsistency and random losses to subpar teams. Even in the first round, it seemed as if you were expecting to lose game 7. At what point in the season/playoffs did you really feel as if "we got a real shot at winning this"?

Thanks for the question. One of the biggest reasons we had a lot of scrutiny for ourselves was dropping games at home to suspect teams. Not shot at any teams we lost to, but it really didn't look too good. I think as the coach some of that falls on me for not getting the guys ready for those challenges like a lot of other teams did. We hadn't spent a ton of time diving into which lineups were working best. Change is a necessary thing in this league and even if you don't necessarily want to do it via player movement, being flexible with changing your scheme is pretty key. I'm not saying if you have 5 guys who play major strengths as interior guys to start chucking 3's; but there are some things you can do. As far as the moment, I think and this is no shot at the Warriors, when we handled our business versus that team without Kemp. When we became the favorites and won the 3 in a row there we started to allow ourselves to have that championship chip on our shoulders.

[IamQuailman]