October of 2020 will go down as a memorable one for the city of Los Angeles with both the Dodgers and Lakers winning championships, doing so in the same year for the first time since 1988. Of course, back then it was during the summer and fall, rather than weeks apart.
The two teams being so great instilled a sense of pride amongst the L.A. sports community as Dodgers and Lakers players were openly rooting for each other during their respective title runs.
LeBron James made headlines during the World Series when he put out a handful of tweets rooting on the Dodgers, particularly showing love to Cody Bellinger, Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw.
Bellinger recently discussed how special it was getting a shoutout like that from someone of James’ stature and also said the Dodgers took motivation from the Lakers in order to win it all, via Sam Alipour of ESPN:
“Yeah, I saw it right after the game. All my boys sent it to me, like, ‘Yo, you got LeBron to tweet at you!’ Even if you’re an athlete, LeBron James is LeBron James, the GOAT of everything, so it was cool. The Lakers definitely motivated us. When we saw them win, we were like, ‘What we got in this locker room, we can do the same thing. We’re so talented.'”
James is one of the best basketball players ever and only took two years to deliver on his promise that he would bring a championship back to L.A., which is his fourth personally and the franchise’s 17th.
Bellinger is now starting to build a legacy of his own as in four big league seasons he has won National League Rookie of the Year, an MVP and played in the World Series three times, now winning it once.
He came up with one of the biggest hits of the Dodgers’ season, delivering a game-winning home run in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.
Bellinger, James hopeful L.A. can have championship parades
Given the current status of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Dodgers and Lakers have not yet had the opportunity to truly celebrate their championships with fans.
Both James and Bellinger are hopeful that will change in the future though as they took to Twitter to ask L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti for championship parades.
PARADE!!!?! @ericgarcetti https://t.co/Rr8sMXya5W
— Cody Bellinger (@Cody_Bellinger) October 28, 2020
Hopefully whenever the time is right, the city of L.A. and the players will be able to celebrate the championships appropriately to commemorate winning them within a month of each other, which will likely never happen again.
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