Los Angeles Lakers PNG Transparent Images

Submitted by on Aug 19, 2021

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The Los Angeles Lakers are a Los Angeles-based professional basketball club. The Lakers are a member of the Western Conference Pacific Division of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Los Angeles Lakers share Staples Center alongside the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, the Women’s National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Sparks, and the National Hockey League’s Los Angeles Kings. The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the most successful teams in NBA history, having won 17 championships, tying the Boston Celtics for the most.

The Detroit Gems of the National Basketball League was purchased in 1947 and were the franchise’s foundation (NBL). The new club, known as the Minneapolis Lakers, began playing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Initially, a member of the National Basketball League, the Lakers won the league’s championship in 1948 before switching to the Basketball Association of America. They would win five of the following six titles, headed by star George Mikan. They relocated to Los Angeles before the 1960–61 season after suffering financially in the late 1950s following Mikan’s retirement.

Los Angeles made the NBA Finals six times in the 1960s, led by Hall of Famers Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, but lost every series to the Celtics, kicking off their long and legendary rivalry. The Lakers acquired four-time NBA MVP Wilt Chamberlain in 1968 and, guided by new head coach Bill Sharman, won their sixth NBA title—and first in Los Angeles—in 1972. Following West and Chamberlain’s retirements, the franchise acquired superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who won several MVP titles with the Lakers. While the club failed to reach the Finals in the late 1970s, two significant developments in 1979 heralded the start of a new golden age for the franchise.

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First, Jerry Buss bought the Lakers and pioneered a concept of basketball games as entertainment spectacles and athletic events as the team’s owner. Second, in the 1979 NBA draft, the Lakers selected Magic Johnson first overall.

The Lakers had two superstars to anchor their team in Johnson, a passing prodigy, and Abdul-Jabbar. The Lakers established themselves as an NBA powerhouse in the 1980s with the acquisitions of head coach Pat Riley in 1981 and James Worthy via the NBA draft in 1982. Because of Johnson’s fast break, transition offense, the club was dubbed the “Showtime Lakers.” The club won five titles in nine years, including numerous key Finals matches against its archrival, the Celtics.

The club suffered in the 1990s when Abdul-Jabbar, Johnson, and Worthy retired until it selected Kobe Bryant and signed Shaquille O’Neal in 1996. Between 2000 and 2002, the superstar combo and Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson led the Lakers to their second “three-peat,” winning three straight championships. The “Shaq-and-Kobe” era ended when the Lakers dealt away O’Neal after the team lost in the 2004 NBA Finals.

Bryant and Jackson did not return to the NBA Finals until the Lakers acquired Pau Gasol, and they won two more titles in 2009 and 2010. The club struggled to reclaim its previous grandeur during the rest of the decade, and Bryant retired in 2016. The Lakers won their 17th championship in 2020, matching the Celtics for the most titles in NBA history, led by LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and coach Frank Vogel.

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