Lakers News: Warriors' Curry, Kerr Praise LAL; Heat's Jimmy Butler Throws Shade

People are talking about the Los Angeles Lakers.

Why wouldn't they?

There's always a good deal of intrigue with the NBA's most glamorous franchise, and it grows exponentially when the Lakers are the defending champs—and the front-runners to take the next title, too.

Let's break down the latest chatter, all of which revolves around past NBA Finals opponents of Lakers superstar LeBron James.

Stephen Curry Sees 'Championship Confidence' in Lakers; Steve Kerr Sees the 73-Win Warriors

The Lakers have nine wins to show for their last 10 games. Six were decided by double digits.

Oh, since the club just completed its championship run in October, it's smartly pacing itself out of the starting blocks with only three players averaging more than 25 minutes and none topping 32 per night.

That makes their dominance—first in winning percentage, first in net efficiency rating, per NBA.com—all the more incredible, and Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, an eight-time NBA champion, thinks he knows their secret sauce.

"They have the confidence that comes with winning a championship and they don't have the fatigue that comes with winning multiple championships," Kerr told reporters. "This is really a sweet spot. It's where we found ourselves the year we won 73."

That would be the 2015-16 Warriors, a team James knows better than most. It's the one he knocked off to help the Cleveland Cavaliers win the NBA championship, becoming the first Finalist to recover from a 3-1 deficit in the process.

Golden State sandwiched three championships around that loss, so its central figures know plenty about winning big at the highest level. Three-time champ and two-time MVP Stephen Curry sees the same swagger in the Lakers that the Dynasty Dubs once had:

"They have championship confidence. Once you get to that mountaintop, it's kind of an unreal feeling to carry it over to the next season. Obviously, the consistency of how they play, the chemistry—obviously, they have new additions, but they have an identity, and they know how to play off each other. Obviously, LeBron and AD [Anthony Davis] are playing at a very high level, but everyone is playing their role and doing their part.

"It's no coincidence they're starting off well. It takes a lot to beat them."

The Warriors engineered one of the most impressive runs in NBA history. That the Lakers are already resembling them only a season-plus into the James-Davis era is a frightening thought for the rest of the league.

Jimmy Butler Thinks Heat Should've Won Title

The Miami Heat surprised everyone with their sprint from the Eastern Conference's fifth seed into the NBA Finals last season.

Well, they surprised everyone but themselves, that is.

The team could not have made that surge without supreme confidence in itself, and that belief apparently hasn't wavered one bit. Heat All-Star Jimmy Butler, who engineered Miami's two wins in the series with 35-plus-point triple-doubles, is still fuming over the two victories his club failed to achieve.

"We still think that we should have won—and we were down a couple of guys," Butler told GQ's Zito Madu.

Lakers fans just might disagree with that assessment.

While the Heat certainly weren't helped by injuries to Goran Dragic and Bam Adebayo, they also were a weight class behind the Lakers in star power. Butler and Adebayo are a really good pairing, but James and Davis just so happen to be a duo for the ages.

If Butler didn't record a pair of historic Finals performances, the Heat wouldn't have had their two wins in the series. The Lakers won the other four contests by an average of 11.8 points per game.

But L.A. won't waste time looking back, because it has more important things to look forward to—like turning the championship win into a title streak.