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LAS VEGAS — Frank Vogel stood outside the Dallas Mavericks’ temporary locker room Wednesday night and recounted the shiver that recently ran down his spine. He and his family had taken a visit to the University of Miami with his wife and two daughters when he felt a strange sensation of familiarity.
The palm trees. The man-made lake. The dense Saint Augustine grass. The humidity and the Florida sun.
It really felt like the 2020 NBA bubble.
As he told the story about how the campus visit triggered memories of those 90-some days living at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, his co-worker with the Mavericks, Mike Penberthy, laughed. He’d lived it too.
Dru Anthrop, another Dallas assistant, walked up shortly after the story, but he would’ve totally understood. Mavericks skills guru Phil Handy would’ve gotten it. Same goes for their boss, Jason Kidd.
“Hoops and FaceTime!” Vogel said with a laugh.
Five years after they served on the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2020 title-winning coaching staff, a group that used to wash down room service pizza and chicken wings with beers in Vogel’s hotel suite has reunited in Dallas, with Kidd as the head coach, to try and capture another championship and build a new set of shared experiences together.
Seeing the Mavericks now makes it impossible not to think of the Lakers then, whether it’s Anthony Davis hitting mid-range jumpers or Vogel, Kidd, Handy, Penberthy and Anthrop all sitting together on the bench. Between last February’s Luka Dončić trade and Kidd’s coaching staff mirroring Vogel’s in 2020, the two franchises are tightly intertwined.
“It was the pinnacle of my coaching career,” Vogel told The Athletic on Wednesday after Dallas beat the Lakers in a preseason game. “I haven’t been back on top since, and so I just cherish the opportunity that the Lakers gave me back then with that team. I’ve been talking to Kyrie (Irving) a little bit this year about how we had such a strong coaching staff but also the talent that we had and how the pieces fit. …We were able to do something special.”
The years since — the five-year anniversary of the championship was Oct. 11 — have only solidified Vogel’s belief in the title credentials of that Lakers team. From LeBron James and Davis, to Rajon Rondo’s leadership, to the size and depth on the wings, Vogel wouldn’t entertain the idea that his team simply embraced bubble life better than anyone else.
“I don’t really subscribe to the fact that teams that lost get to just say, ‘We didn’t want to be there.’ And the thing that sticks out to be, for all the people that want to asterisk this thing, we were the number one team from day one,” Vogel said. “We entered the bubble as the number one team in the league, the number one seed. We were gonna win that thing, whether it was in the bubble or whether it was in Staples Center. We were winning that thing. We had that belief.
“And we had to go through obstacles and delays, and go into the world’s first biosphere, to get through it. But we were gonna win that no matter what.”
Vogel, who joined Kidd’s staff this offseason, said the bonds he formed not only by winning a title, but by doing so in circumstances like the bubble, have him looking for reasons to keep his teams as close as possible.
“Our team that year spent so much time together because they had to. It’s something that every team I have going forward, I’ll share what that time together meant to our connectivity, and try to be the best we can outside the bubble to duplicate that,” he said. “Dinners on the road. Dinners at home. Any way we can bring our team together. The day-to-day stuff. Nothing to do when Monday Night Football is on? ‘Hey, let’s the whole team go watch Monday Night Football.’”
As Vogel and Penberthy shared memories from the 93 days they spent in the bubble together, they talked about how that experience fast-tracked their relationships and how that led them back to Dallas to try and win again.
“The refs, the reporters, the media, everybody, all the league office people, the players, we were all in it together,” Vogel said. “And it was the strangest time in world history possibly. You know what I mean? And we all got to go through it together and figure it out.”
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Dan Woike covers the Los Angeles Lakers for The Athletic. He’s written about professional basketball in Los Angeles since 2011, first for the Orange County Register and most recently for the Los Angeles Times. His work has been recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Pro Basketball Writers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club and the California News Publishers Association. He’s originally from Chicago. Follow Dan on Twitter @DanWoikeSports
