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Lakers beat Heat to clinch 17th NBA title

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LeBron James has won his fourth NBA title, leading the Lakers to a 4-2 Finals series win over Miami.
Camera IconLeBron James has won his fourth NBA title, leading the Lakers to a 4-2 Finals series win over Miami.

The ultimate anguish. The ultimate joy.

This season, for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, had it all. And it ended in the only fashion that they deemed would be acceptable, with them back atop the basketball world.

For the first time since Kobe Bryant's fifth and final title a decade ago, the Lakers are NBA champions. James had 28 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists, and the Lakers beat the Miami Heat 106-93 on Sunday night to win the NBA Finals in six games.

"Our organisation wants their respect. Laker Nation wants their respect," James said.

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"And I want my damn respect, too."

Anthony Davis had 19 points and 15 rebounds for the Lakers, who dealt with the enormous anguish that followed the death of the iconic Bryant in January and all the challenges that came with leaving home for three months to play at Walt Disney World in a bubble designed to keep inhabitants safe from coronavirus.

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And Davis, as white and gold confetti coated the floor around him, spent his first moments as a NBA champion thinking of Bryant.

"All we wanted to do was do it for him," Davis said.

"And we didn't let him down ... I know he's looking down on us, proud of us."

They made the clincher look easy. Game 6 was over at halftime, the Lakers taking a 64-36 lead into the break - the second-biggest margin in NBA Finals history.

Rajon Rondo, now a two-time champion and the first to win NBA rings as a player in the cities of Boston and Los Angeles - the franchises now tied with 17 titles apiece - was 6 for 6 in the half, the first time he'd done that since November 2007.

James won his fourth title, doing it with a third different franchise - and against the Heat franchise that showed him to to become a champion.

John Salley and Robert Horry were, until Sunday, the only players to win championships with three different franchises. James (Miami, Cleveland) and Danny Green (San Antonio, Toronto) added their names to that list with this title.

It would be, James predicted, the toughest title to ever win.

"We have a PhD in adversity, I'll tell you that much," Lakers coach Frank Vogel said.

"We've been through a lot."

True to form, the Heat - a No.5 seed in the Eastern Conference that embraced the challenge of the bubble like none other - didn't stop playing, not even when the deficit got to 36 in the third quarter.

"We didn't get the final result that we wanted," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.

"This locker room ... we're going to remember this year, this season, this experience and that locker room brotherhood for the rest of our lives."

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