Which contender had a player of Avery Bradley's caliber cancel on them b4 the bubble?

[TheGoatest]

Throughout the season, Bradley had been as good of a player for a Lakers as anyone not named LeBron James or Anthony Davis.
And he didn't join them in the bubble. Yet in spite of this the Lakers, led by the great LeBron James fought through and are playing for the championship tomorrow.

[8Ball]

No team.

Everyone talks about Miami losing Dragic. What about Lakers starting point guard?

Lakers backup pointguard Rondo broke his hand before the bubble!

Lakers were playing without their starting and backup pointguard for the entire start of bubble plus the first round!

Guess who had to pick up the slack for TWO pointguards out? Bron

[AirTupac]

AB is without a doubt our best perimeter defender. He has been healthy and in the best shape of his life and it showed. We would probably sweep everyone with AB playing full court elite defense.

[light]

True. Some Lakers fans panicked over losing Bradley. They saw the guards the Lakers may potentially face (Lillard/McCollum, Harden/Westbrook, etc) and thought the end was near.

I tempered their fears by saying that Bradley's absence wouldn't make that much of a difference as the Lakers still had enough guard talent to win the title. That they could afford to lose any one of their shooting guards - as long as LAL had any three of Bradley, Green, KCP and Caruso they were going to be fine.

So for me AB was always a little bit irrelevant. Or maybe not irrelevant, but redundant. He was a luxury.