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It’s been a long, 32-year wait, but Los Angeles is home to the World Series champions once again following the Dodgers’ 3-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays at the Globe Life Field in Texas on Tuesday. However, they’re going to have to wait in line to throw their championship parade — once it’s safe, of course — because the Lakers were also crowned champions this month, marking the first time since 1988 that both the Lakers and Dodgers have won a championship in the same year.
Suffice to say, there have been worse times to be a fan of Los Angeles sports teams.
The last time the Lakers won a championship in the same year as the Dodgers was when Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar beat Isiah Thomas, Adrian Dantley and the Detroit Pistons in the 1988 NBA Finals. Two months later, Tommy Lasorda’s Dodgers beat the Oakland Athletics in five games. Lasorda is 93 years old today. It’s been a while.
This year, all it took was six games for the Lakers and Dodgers to win their respective series and ironically, it only went to six games because of a pair of unfortunate plays: Danny Green’s missed 3-pointer in Game 5 and Will Smith’s error at home plate in Game 4. The latter was a lot worse than the former, but thankfully neither of them ended up meaning anything in the grand scheme of things — they’re champions.
Another thing that makes this specific pair of championships unique is the fact that they were won in the same month. Typically, the NBA Finals take place in June, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, the NBA Finals were played in October, a month that’s usually reserved for the World Series. When you consider that, pandemic permitting, this will never happen again, that’s pretty cool.
Generally speaking, 2020 has sucked, so it’s nice that we can at least celebrate the historic dominance of Los Angeles sports. Let’s just make sure we’re celebrating safely and responsibly.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow this author on Twitter at @RadRivas.