Los Angeles Lakers:
Trying out the equation “addition by subtraction”

The Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association are the franchise by which the rest of the league measures their success. Since the 1976-‘77 season the Lakers have only missed the playoffs once. In that same span the team has accumulated a record of 1548-798 which is an awe inspiring .660 winning percentage over the last 28 seasons. The Lakers are the Yankees of basketball and everyone hates to see them win except for Lakers fans. The team has housed Hall of Famers like Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Wilt Chamberlain, and James Worthy. The team also has had future Hall of Famers Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant all suit up in the purple and gold. Their most dominating period in the NBA came between the 1999-’00 and 2001-’02 seasons when they won three straight championships and had a regular season record of 181-65. The team was unstoppable. What made the change possible was the maturation of Bryant and O’Neal under the careful tutelage of Phil Jackson. Jackson has a knack of leading superstars into games and helping them get their heads on straight enough to come together and win. He did just that when the Lakers lost a total of three games in their three straight NBA Finals appearances. Along the way to the three championships the Lakers developed a heated rivalry with their fellow Californians, the Sacramento Kings. The Lakers broke their hearts in each of the three seasons with two of the series going to the final game and the Lakers coming out on top.

Last season was a bit of a soap opera for the Lakers. Kobe Bryant was accused of raping a woman in Colorado and would have hearings on the same day as games and would fly back to LA to play the game. The team acquired Karl Malone and Gary Payton to help Shaq and Kobe out. The Kobe/Shaq rivalry of whose team the Lakers was also boiled over a couple of times during the season. Payton just couldn’t find his place with the team and looked like he aged 100 years over the summer. No one seemed to be too happy with their situation, and even the Zen Master himself, Phil Jackson, appeared to be frustrated all year long. The team managed to win the Pacific Division, thanks to a Sacramento implosion, and get the number two seed in the West. In the first round the Lakers looked bad, but the Rockets managed to be worse and the Lakers won the series 4-1. The second round match up with the Spurs had championship implications all over it due to the fact that the winner of the last five championships had been the Spurs or Lakers. The Spurs, riding a 15 game winning streak, took the first two games of the series going back to LA. The Lakers evened up the series with two wins and the series was tied 2-2 when they played in a game that will go down in the history books as one of the greatest ever. The Spurs found themselves down by one point with 11.9 seconds left when Tim Duncan hit an off balance shot from the top of the key over O’Neal with just 0.4 left on the clock. The Spurs defended the inbound play and Payton found reserve guard Derek Fisher who hit an off-balance shot of his own over Manu Ginobilli and after that the Lakers never looked back and won the series 4-2. The Lakers ran over the Timberwolves 4-2 and didn’t look very Lakeresque against the Pistons and fell to them in the NBA Finals 4-1. The series was never close after the first game.

The only thing that could rival the roller coaster season the Lakers had was the summer of 2004. Bryant, Payton, and Malone were all free agents and all havoc broke loose. The Lakers didn’t resign Phil Jackson and brought in Rudy Tomjanovich. They managed to resign Kobe but not after they traded the most dominant big man in the NBA Shaquille O’Neal. O’Neal was sent to Miami for Caron Butler, Lamar Odom and Brian Grant. The team then turned around and traded Payton, Rick Fox, and a conditional first round pick to the Celtics for Chucky Atkins, Chris Mihm and Jumaine Jones. They also lost backup point guard Derek Fisher to Golden State. The team has been molded into a team that will accentuate Kobe and really no one else. Bryant now has his chance to prove if he can lead a team all on his own like Jordan did. If he succeeds then he got what he wanted all along, but there is also a chance that he’ll end up like Pippen did where he couldn’t carry a team without a greater superstar right next to him. Only time will tell what happens with Bryant.

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