Los Angeles Lakers

• 1. Introduction

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  The Los Angeles Lakers have won 17 NBA championships, second only to the Boston Celtics in the history of professional basketball. That total was tied with the Celtics until 2024, the product of nearly eight decades of play across two cities, three distinct dynasties, and a roster of superstars whose names are shorthand for the sport itself. But the franchise did not start in Los Angeles, and it did not start with glamour. It started in Detroit in 1946, finishing last in the National Basketball League with just 4 wins in 44 games. The journey from that wreckage to the team that sold itself as entertainment, that played to a sold-out arena on Christmas and packed arenas across the country, is one of the stranger stories in American sport. How does a team that lost nearly every game in its first season become the most decorated franchise in its sport? What was the vision that transformed losing into dynasty, twice? And what role did a single owner, a single draft pick, and a single rivalry with Boston play in making the Lakers what they are?

• 2. Detroit to Minneapolis

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  The Detroit Gems were founded by two Dearborn businessmen, Morris Winston and C. King Boring, and played a single season of embarrassing basketball before being sold. Ben Berger and Morris Chalfen of Minnesota purchased the franchise for $15,000. Sportswriter Sid Hartman played a behind-the-scenes role in assembling the deal and then helped the new owners hire John Kundla from the College of St. Thomas as head coach. The name came from Minnesota's nickname, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Having finished last the prior season, the new Minneapolis Lakers held the first pick in the 1947 Professional Basketball League of America dispersal draft. They used it to select George Mikan. Mikan changed everything. In the Lakers' first season under their new identity, they led the league with a 43-17 record and won the NBL championship. When they moved to the Basketball Association of America in 1948, Mikan's 28.3 points per game set a BAA record. They won that league's championship in 1949, then won three more NBA titles after the BAA and NBL merged into the NBA. One game from that era became notorious for all the wrong reasons: a 19-18 loss to the Fort Wayne Pistons stands as the lowest-scoring contest in NBA history. Mikan retired after the 1954 season. Without him, attendance collapsed, and the team lost money for several seasons. Owner Bob Short was eventually forced to move the franchise. He had lost $60,000 in the first half of the 1959-60 season alone.

• 3. A Rivalry Built on Defeat

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  Bob Short moved the Lakers to Los Angeles before the 1960-61 season, making them the NBA's first West Coast team. The team drafted Jerry West from West Virginia University with the second pick in the 1960 draft after a plane carrying the squad crash-landed in a cornfield during a snowstorm, the pilot forced 150 miles off course. Elgin Baylor led the team in its first Los Angeles season at 34.8 points and 19.8 rebounds per game. On the 15th of November that season, Baylor scored 71 points against the New York Knicks while grabbing 25 rebounds, breaking his own NBA record of 64. The Lakers made the Finals six times in the 1960s and lost every single one of them to the Boston Celtics. In the 1962 Finals, Los Angeles came within two points in overtime of game seven before losing. Guard Frank Selvy, who had made two jumpers in the final 40 seconds to tie the game, missed an 18-foot jump shot in regulation that could have won it. He said in June 2010 that the miss still haunted him more than 40 years later. The pattern held year after year. Los Angeles lost by three points in overtime of game seven in 1962, in six games in 1963, in five games in 1965, by two points in game seven in 1966, and again in six games in 1968. Eight Finals losses to the same team were the organizing fact of the franchise's first decade in Los Angeles.

• 4. The Record-Setting Season

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  On the 9th of July, 1968, the Lakers acquired Wilt Chamberlain from the Philadelphia 76ers for Darrell Imhoff, Archie Clark, and Jerry Chambers. Chamberlain in his first Laker season averaged a league-leading 21.1 rebounds per game, a team record. When the Lakers and Celtics met in the 1969 Finals, Los Angeles had home-court advantage against Boston for the first time in their rivalry. Jerry West scored 53 points in game one, and the Lakers held a 3-2 lead. Boston still won in seven games. West was named Finals MVP, the only time in NBA history a player on the losing team has received that honor. The championship finally arrived in the 1971-72 season. New head coach Bill Sharman introduced the shootaround, a morning practice at the arena on game days. The team won 14 straight in November and all 16 games in December. A win streak built through January until the Milwaukee Bucks ended it on the 9th of January at 33 games, still the longest winning streak in major American professional team sports history. The Lakers won 69 games that season, a record that stood for 24 years until the Chicago Bulls won 72 in 1995-96. Chamberlain averaged 14.8 points but led the league in rebounding at 19.2 per game and shot 72.7 percent from the field in the following season, a record that stood for several decades. In game five of the 1972 Finals against the New York Knicks, Chamberlain tallied 24 points and 29 rebounds and was named Finals MVP.

• 5. Showtime

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  Jerry Buss purchased the Lakers in 1979 for $67.5 million, of which the franchise itself constituted $16 million. He paid for the team, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings, the Forum, and some real estate. Buss had a vision: basketball as entertainment, not just sport. That same year, the Lakers drafted 6-foot-9-inch point guard Magic Johnson from Michigan State with the first overall pick. Johnson's no-look passes often caught his own teammates off guard until they adjusted. The Lakers won 60 games in his rookie season and defeated the Philadelphia 76ers in six games in the 1980 Finals. Johnson started at center for an injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in game six, tallied 42 points, 15 rebounds, and seven assists, and won the Finals MVP. Pat Riley was promoted to head coach on the 19th of November, 1981. The team won 17 of its next 20 games and picked up the nickname Showtime for its fast-break offense. On draft night in 1982, the Lakers selected James Worthy from North Carolina with the first overall pick, the result of a trade made with Cleveland back in 1979-80. The franchise won five championships in nine years in the 1980s. They beat the Celtics in 1985 in Boston Garden, the first visiting team to win a championship there. In game four of the 1987 Finals in Boston, Johnson hit a running hook shot with two seconds remaining to win the game. At the championship celebration, Riley publicly promised a repeat, which the Lakers then delivered in 1988, defeating the Detroit Pistons in seven games. James Worthy's triple-double in game seven earned him the Finals MVP.

• 6. O'Neal, Bryant, and the Three-Peat

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  In 1996, the Lakers traded for 17-year-old Kobe Bryant, who had been drafted 13th overall out of Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania by the Charlotte Hornets. The same summer, Los Angeles signed free-agent center Shaquille O'Neal. O'Neal later said that Jerry West was the reason he chose the Lakers. Phil Jackson, who had coached the Chicago Bulls to six championships, was hired before the 1999-2000 season at a salary of $6 million a year. He brought Tex Winter's triangle offense and the team moved to the new Staples Center arena. Led by league MVP O'Neal, the Lakers finished 67-15 and won their first title since 1988 by defeating the Indiana Pacers four games to two. They repeated in 2001 with a 15-1 postseason record, the best in NBA history, defeating the Philadelphia 76ers. The 2002 Western Conference Finals against Sacramento became one of the most contested playoff series in league history. Robert Horry hit a three-pointer with under three seconds left in game four after Vlade Divac accidentally tapped the ball into Horry's hands. The Lakers won game six in what became one of the most controversial playoff games in NBA history, then won game seven in overtime. They swept the New Jersey Nets in the Finals for a three-peat. O'Neal won all three Finals MVP awards, making him the only player besides Michael Jordan to win three consecutive Finals MVPs. On the 22nd of January, 2006, after the O'Neal era had ended, Bryant scored 81 points against Toronto, the second-highest total in NBA history.

• 7. The 2020 Championship

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  LeBron James signed with the Lakers on the 9th of July, 2018, for four years and $154 million. The team subsequently traded several young players for Anthony Davis, who arrived in 2019. On the 25th of January, 2020, James passed Kobe Bryant for third place on the NBA's all-time scoring list during a road game against the Philadelphia 76ers in Bryant's hometown. The next day, Bryant was killed in a helicopter accident in Calabasas, alongside his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others. The Lakers postponed their January 28 crosstown game against the Los Angeles Clippers, the first NBA game postponement since the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The 2019-20 season was suspended in March, and the Lakers competed in the NBA Bubble as a top seed for the first time since 2010. They defeated the Miami Heat four games to two in the Finals. James was named Finals MVP for the fourth time in his career. Jeanie Buss became the first female controlling owner of an NBA team to win the Finals. On the 9th of December, 2023, the Lakers won the inaugural NBA In-Season Tournament, with James named its first-ever MVP. On the 27th of June, 2024, the Lakers drafted Bronny James with the 55th overall pick, making LeBron and Bronny the first father-and-son duo in NBA history. On the 23rd of October, 2024, they became the first father and son to play together in an NBA game, in a victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves. On the 1st of February, 2025, the Lakers traded Anthony Davis for Luka Doncic, opening another chapter in a franchise that has restarted itself in nearly every decade of its existence.