When Lakers and Nuggets faced each other on a WWE ring

The history of wrestling is full of controversial, funny or simply curious moments. To this last category belongs the 5 vs 5 match that involved Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets, a sort of NBA game played inside a wrestling ring. The episode dates back to May 2009, but the story officially begins on August 15, 2008: that day Vince McMahon, owner of WWE, signed an agreement with Stan Kroenke, a key figure of Kroenke Sports, to rent the then Pepsi Center in Denver for the evening of May 25, 2009. Kroenke Sports is the company that owns the arena and the Denver Nuggets NBA franchise. At the time the agreement was made, the NBA schedule for the 2008/09 season had not yet been finalized, nor were the playoff dates known. Fast forward to May 17, 2009, when the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Houston Rockets in the second round of the Western Conference. This meant that the yellow and purple team would face the Denver Nuggets in the Conference Finals with home-court advantage. As a result, Game 4 would be played at the Pepsi Center on May 25, 2009. This is where the feud between McMahon and Kroenke begins.

Faced with unexpected commitments, Kroenke chose to back out of the agreement with WWE by withdrawing the availability of the Pepsi Center, obviously giving priority to his commitments with the NBA. At the same time, he tried to accommodate WWE's needs, which had already announced that they had sold 10 thousand tickets for the event scheduled for that evening. Quick disclaimer for non-wrestling fans: the event in question was an episode of Monday Night Raw, the flagship TV show of WWE that airs live every Monday night. For this reason, McMahon rejected both Kroenke's proposal to move the event to Sunday night and to transfer it to a different location, namely the Denver Coliseum, a nearby arena that could have accommodated the 10 thousand ticket holders. At this point, however, McMahon was not willing to compromise and decided to make it personal: "Even though the Denver Nuggets had a strong team this year and were expected to make the playoffs, apparently the owner of the Nuggets and the Pepsi Center, Stan Kroenke, didn't have enough confidence in his own team to keep the date of May 25 open for a potential playoff game," McMahon declared on the matter.

In the end, the episode of Monday Night RAW was still held on May 25, 2009, but since McMahon has become famous for his diabolical mind, the event was not moved to just any location, but to the Staples Center, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers, now known as the Crypto.com Arena. And not only was the event held at the arena owned by the team that was playing against the Denver Nuggets in the NBA playoffs, but the Main Event of the evening was the aforementioned 5 vs 5 match, in which the team of villains wore the Denver Nuggets jersey while the good guys, of course, wore the yellow and purple Lakers jersey. And it doesn't end there. The devil's perfidy is seen in the details, and in this move we can see all the pettiness of McMahon, determined to humiliate Kroenke for not respecting a commercial agreement. To announce the entrance of the Face team, the official announcer of the Lakers was involved, and the wrestlers wore a personalized jersey over their stage outfit, at most embellished with some gadget. The only one who completely changed his image was Batista, who usually entered the ring wearing only briefs and boots, but in this case he wore a complete kit, jersey and shorts, with sneakers on his feet. The match, of course, ended with a victory for the Los Angeles Lakers, as did the playoff series, with Kobe Bryant's Lakers then managing to win the NBA title against the Orlando Magic.