The Los Angeles Lakers are an American professional basketball platoon grounded in Los Angeles. The Lakers contend in the National Basketball Association( NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. The Lakers play their home games at Crypto.com Arena, an arena participated with the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers, the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women's National Basketball Association, and the Los Angeles lords of the National Hockey League.( 9) The Lakers are one of the most successful brigades in the history of the NBA, and have won 17 NBA crowns, tied with the Boston Celtics for the most in NBA history.
The ballot began with the 1947 purchase of a disbanded platoon, the Detroit Gems of the National Basketball League( NBL). The new platoon began playing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, calling themselves the Minneapolis Lakers. originally a member of the NBL, the Lakers won the 1948 NBL crown before joining the rival Basketball Association of America, where they would win five of the coming six crowns, led by star George Mikan. After floundering financially in the late 1950s following Mikan's withdrawal, they dislocated to Los Angeles before the 1960 – 61 season.
Led by Hall of Famers Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, Los Angeles made the NBA Tests six times in the 1960s, but lost every series to the Celtics, beginning their long and fabled contest. In 1968, the Lakers acquired four- time NBA Most Valuable Player( MVP) Wilt Chamberlain, and won their sixth NBA title — and first in Los Angeles — in 1972, led by new head trainer Bill Sharman. After the withdrawal of West and Chamberlain, the platoon traded for megastar Kareem Abdul- Jabbar, who would win three MVP awards as a Laker. While the platoon was unfit to advance to the Tests in the late 1970s, two momentous changes came in 1979 that would inaugurate a new golden period for the ballot. First, Jerry Buss bought the Lakers, and as the platoon's proprietor, innovated a vision of basketball games as entertainment specs as well as sporting events. Alternate, the Lakers drafted Magic Johnson first overall in the 1979 NBA draft.
The combination of Johnson, a passing sensation point guard, and a dominant center in Abdul- Jabbar handed the Lakers with two stars to anchor their canon. The creation of head trainer Pat Riley in 1981 and the addition of forward James Worthy through the 1982 draft established the Lakers as an NBA hustler throughout the 1980s. The platoon was nicknamed the" Showtime Lakers" due to its fast break, transition offense eased by Johnson. The ballot won five crowns in a nine- time span, including winning two out of three marquee Tests competitions against the Celtics. The Lakers were defeated by their Boston archrivals in the 1984 Tests, but triumphed over the Celtics in 1985 and 1987.
After Riley departed and Abdul- Jabbar, Johnson, and Worthy all retired, the Lakers plodded in the early 1990s. It wasn't until 1996 when the platoon traded with the Charlotte Hornets for the draft rights to Kobe Bryant and inked star center ShaquilleO'Neal that the Lakers returned to dominance during the early 2000s. The megastar brace of Bryant andO'Neal, along with Hall of Fame trainer Phil Jackson, led the Lakers to three successive crowns between 2000 to 2002, securing the ballot's alternate" three- peat." The dynamic but tumultuous" Shaq- and- Kobe" period ended when the Lakers traded downO'Neal after the platoon lost to the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 Tests. It wasn't until after the Lakers traded for Pau Gasol that Bryant and Jackson returned to the NBA Tests, losing to the Celtics in 2008 but winning two further crowns in 2009 and 2010. The 2010 Tests marked the rearmost tourney of the Lakers and Celtics, with Los Angeles winning its 16th title against its ancient rival in a seven- game series.
Jackson retired from guiding in 2011, and after a string of tumultuous playoff exits, the Lakers endured their longest playoff failure in ballot history. Gasol departed as a free agent in 2014, and Bryant retired in 2016 after twenty times as a Laker. After multiple reconditioning seasons with youthful, largely rated prospects, the Lakers inked megastar LeBron James in 2018. In 2019, the platoon traded several of those prospects for star big man Anthony Davis. The Lakers — led by James, Davis, and head trainer Frank Vogel — won the platoon's 17th crown in 2020, tying the Celtics for the most titles in NBA history.
The Lakers hold the record for NBA's longest winning band, 33 straight games, set during the 1971 – 72 season. Twenty- six Hall of Famers have played for Los Angeles, while four have counseled the platoon. Four players — Abdul- Jabbar, Johnson,O'Neal, and Bryant have won a combined eight NBA MVP awards with the Lakers.